


Deconversion

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Animal Transformation, Body Modification, Dark Draco, Dark Harry, Insanity, M/M, Parseltongue, Snakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 15:01:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 26
Words: 103,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/762726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were right, those old wizards who thought Parseltongue was a Dark gift. As Harry begins his slide down, fighting desperately all the way, Draco is more than happy to take advantage of the Hero’s fall from the Light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shadow of the Serpents

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fairly dark fic, full of angst and manipulation.

  
“Harry? You did it again.”  
  
Ron’s voice was soft. Harry wouldn’t try to analyze what else it was, because he knew he would probably start screaming to no good purpose if he did. Instead, he opened his eyes and sat up, looking slowly around the office.  
  
A cold cup of tea sat nearby, evidence of his futile attempt to keep himself awake. Not that _awake_ would do much good, not now that he was seeing the visions all the time, whether he had his eyes open or shut. Off to one side was the finished pile of reports, only waiting for Ron’s signature, that Harry had worked on while he tried to ignore the shapes slithering across the sides and flanks of his awareness.  
  
Ron took a seat on the clear space of the desk and folded his arms, staring at him. Harry avoided his gaze and just started down at his own hands, which were clenched closed hard enough to hurt. He opened his fingers, and watched the small crescent half-moon marks spring into shape.   
  
“ _Mate_.” Ron’s voice cut at him.  
  
Harry turned and looked up at him. He tried to keep his eyes focused on Ron’s face alone, but despite himself, he looked at the wall, where a blue snake hung, its tongue flickering out as if to catch Harry’s scent. Its voice sounded in his ears, a hissing song threaded through with the basilisk’s mocking laughter. _Welcome, brother._  
  
Then the snake vanished, and Harry turned back to Ron and said quietly, “Yeah. And the hallucinations are everywhere, now, and half the time when I mean to speak in English, I talk in Parseltongue anyway. It’s time.”  
  
Ron blinked and stood up, as though he was too surprised to keep sitting. Then he breathed out, shakily, and touched his hair, closing his eyes for a moment. “You mean that?” he whispered.  
  
Harry nodded and took his wand out of his pocket. Reversing it, he offered it to Ron. Ron took a second more to open his eyes and see it, but once he did, he dropped it in his own pocket. He reached out a gentle hand, and Harry took it and let Ron haul him to his feet, then turn him equally gently in the direction of the door.  
  
To Harry’s skewed sight, the floor was ankle-deep in swarming black cobras, who raised their heads and hissed at him in agitation. _Say the word,_ said the single voice that formed out of all their many mingled and overlapping sibilants. _Say the word, and we bite him, and he is dead._  
  
Harry turned his head away, gnawing his lip. He had believed the hallucinations once, or at least believed they were harmless, and he had set them on one of his more persistent stalkers, who was always hanging about his office and the Leaky Cauldron and the Atrium and begging for just one more autograph or photograph or smile. What could it hurt, after all? It was just the gesture of someone tired and frustrated, someone who _imagined_ nasty things happening to people, but didn’t want them to. Harry could imagine snakes attacking someone all day long, and nothing would happen, because the snakes were of his mind alone, and not real.  
  
And it was true that no one else had _seen_ the snakes that came together and converged on Leonard Kipling in a wave. But he had screamed and convulsed and fallen to the floor, and spent several weeks in St. Mungo’s with the Healers working to save him from the venom just the same.  
  
Ron had talked about wandless magic, Hermione about desires running wild, and both of them had given Harry cautious glances when they thought he wasn’t looking. But he could _feel_ them looking.  
  
And he had seen the snakes everywhere, the way he could see them now, and real snakes were drawn to him, wriggling out of holes and cracks and twining their way into bed with him. He had woken several times now with an adder on his chest, a garter snake asleep with its head resting on his chin, and, once, a python that must have escaped from a fucking _zoo_ draped over legs and throat and groin.  
  
Ron and Hermione had told him it was probably the Parseltongue, and to get help. But Harry had wanted to believe it was something else, _anything_ else. Not a Dark magical gift that he had already tried several times to get rid of, and that wouldn’t go.  
  
Not that he was still suffering from a connection with Voldemort, so long after he had defeated him.  
  
But now Ron was standing behind him, looking at him with pity, and the hissing voices of the snakes in his head meant that he was either mad or would be soon. It was time to go to St. Mungo’s, and hope for the best.  
  
They stepped out into the corridor, and Ron gently steered Harry, with one hand on his shoulder. Harry trusted him enough to shut his eyes and ignore the hissing of the imaginary snakes, the snakes that would only be real if he called on them.  
  
He didn’t want to call on them. He didn’t want to think about how the way Ron handled him was so similar to the way they had handled criminals before, on their way to Azkaban.   
  
He just bowed his head, focused his eyes on his trainers so he wouldn’t trip, and walked out of there, out of the Ministry, for what must be the last time if he couldn’t make this fucking _stop,_ and into custody.  
  
*  
  
“Then our deal is settled.” Nicholas Leatherby, like so many Muggleborns, held his hand out to shake when he concluded a bargain.  
  
Draco managed to hold back the curl of his lip as he accepted the hand. It was an inappropriate level of intimacy between business associates, as far as he was concerned, but suppressing those reactions was one reason he had business associates in the first place. “A pleasure doing business,” he said, and inclined his head, and stepped out into the corridor of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.  
  
Once there, he permitted himself a small smile he knew was vicious, which was one thing he liked about himself. In a month or so, Minister Shacklebolt would experience a regrettable lack of competence among the Potions brewers who supplied the Ministry with Wolfsbane. The Ministry would, as it had had to do a few times since the war, offer the contract to some other group.  
  
That it would be Draco’s group this time was the result of long months of work, negotiation, alliance-building, and former disruptions, each time nudging the Ministry gently away from the competition. Draco thought he deserved more celebration than just a smile, actually.  
  
Plans for such a celebration carried him in a smooth flow of fantasy from the lifts down to the Atrium, where he planned to Floo home, and he didn’t notice most of what he saw along the way. The inside of his own head had always been more interesting to Draco than random other people.  
  
But he did notice, oh yes he did, when he came into the Atrium and saw, standing by the restored Fountain of Magical Brethren, Harry Potter, with Ron Weasley behind him in the posture of a guard. The Wonder Boy had his head bowed and his eyes shut, his lips moving in a ceaseless stream of words that sounded like prayer.  
  
Weasley…  
  
Weasley had not just the _posture_ of a guard, but the expression of one. Draco had seen that distant look of pity, combined with the readiness to move instantly, often during his short term under arrest after the war.  
  
Draco cocked his head. Yes, the inside of his head was more interesting than most sights he saw in the Ministry, but this wasn’t a common sight. He turned and moved to a fireplace further down the line, one with a relatively long queue, so that he could listen to what was happening without attracting much attention.  
  
Potter obliged him by abruptly lifting his head and talking to Weasley without looking behind him. “What if the Healers can’t stop it, Ron?”  
  
Draco would have cracked his knuckles, except that he didn’t feel like drawing attention to himself. He wanted and despised that tone in Potter’s voice at the same time, that tone as though he was flying apart at the seams and wanted someone to put him back together. _Real_ heroes didn’t do that.  
  
Which only proved that Draco had been right about him all along, of course. Potter wouldn’t know real heroism if it kicked him in his perfect jaw.  
  
“They should be able to,” Weasley said, in the kind of low, reassuring tone that Draco knew Azkaban guards used with the more mental kind of prisoners. “Honestly, Harry, this isn’t the first time it’s happened, even if it hasn’t happened in a long time.” He raised his hand as though to rub Potter’s arm, and then pulled it back. Draco wondered if Potter had noticed that, and what he felt about it if he had. “They know—there are _ways_ to keep Dark magic from escaping someone.”  
  
Draco felt all the muscles in his back stiffen and then melt apart in delicious relaxation the way it happened during the first moments of a massage. _Someone cursed Potter? He cursed someone? But neither of those would make Weasley sound as though Dark magic is leaking through his skin…_  
  
“I just hate it,” Potter whispered. “All those stories, all those _times_ that other people thought I was losing my mind, and now it’s really happening. I feel like I’m proving them right.” He closed his eyes and turned his head away from what looked like a specific spot on the floor. Draco looked at it, too, but saw nothing.  
  
“You’re not, Harry.” Weasley still had the tone of a Gryffindor best friend in his voice, Draco thought oddly, no matter how much he might despise Potter for using Dark magic. “We know _that,_ at least. It’s really happening. Those—those _wounds_ on Kipling, and—like I said, there must have been other times they’ve treated Parselmouths. They’ll stop it. They’ll get you back again.” He patted Potter’s shoulder this time, a clumsy gesture that Potter nevertheless leaned into as though it alone would keep him on his feet.  
  
Draco knew he hissed aloud, but although Weasley looked around with a frown, he didn’t appear to notice Draco. The woman in the queue ahead of him did, though, and tossed him a scathing look before casting the Floo powder into the fire and calling out her destination.  
  
Draco didn’t bother listening to said destination, his eyes on Potter, his drooping shoulders and head and slumping body. Very little else for years had been as interesting.  
  
So. That was it. Draco’s tongue tingled, and only the impatient cough of someone behind him made him pick up the Floo powder and step forwards.  
  
So Potter had continued being a Parselmouth after the Dark Lord died, and it was catching up with him at last.  
  
Draco didn’t know what he would do with the information yet, but he knew simultaneously that its possession was exciting enough for right now, and that, ultimately, it would not be enough. His legs felt elastic with adrenaline, his brain dizzy with sweetness.  
  
The first thing he did after stepping out of the fireplace in Malfoy Manor was sit down, shut his eyes, and _think_.  
  
*  
  
Ron gave Harry’s wand to the Healers. Then he told them about the imaginary snakes, the way that Harry had set them on Kipling, the way that Parseltongue rolled out of Harry’s mouth even when he wasn’t concentrating on snakes, while Harry sat on the couch in the private office they’d been ushered into and shivered.  
  
Snakes _everywhere._ When he opened his eyes, a python like the one that had occupied his bed hung in loops from the ceiling, on hooks that he knew weren’t there either, its head turned so that it focused on Ron. A krait coiled on Harry’s boot and twined up his leg in a way that Harry thought was meant to be comforting. Flickering, cool scales touched his hand; when he glanced down, there was a rat snake there, which replaced its back with its tongue against his palm a moment later. The soft sound of a rattlesnake’s tail came from beneath the Healer’s chair.  
  
When the Healer turned and asked him something, Harry couldn’t even listen, his hearing overridden with hissing, chanting, pleading voices. _We could protect you, if you would only use us. We could let you go free. Brother._  
  
“I’m not your fucking _brother!_ ” Harry finally snapped, and knew it was the wrong response from the way that the Healer’s lips thinned.  
  
“Mr. Potter,” the Healer said, drawing his wand, and the snakes turned and hissed at him all at once. Harry told himself he was only going to listen to English words, and, with hard concentration, managed to hear, “I’m going to cast a few diagnostic charms on you. Simple spells, ones that are meant to determine it’s not a different kind of Dark magic influencing you. Is that all right?”  
  
 _No,_ said the krait, wrapped around Harry’s wrist now and swaying back and forth in time with the dizzy motion of the python as it extended its great body down from the hooks in the ceiling, ready to crush Ron if Harry wanted it to. _Tell him no. Brother, we can free you. You can go somewhere far away from here and start over. No one need ever know where you are, except us._  
  
Harry felt something hot and wet in his eyes. He knew they were tears, that he was crying from that promise, that he found that vision _tempting…_  
  
And he nodded to the Healer and covered his ears with his hands and shut his eyes, although he knew it wouldn’t matter, because he was _mad_ and the snakes were inside his head with him. But at least it dimmed them a little bit.  
  
The Healer tapped him gently on the shoulder when he was finished with the spells. Harry flinched violently, and felt the surge of power along the floor as the rattlesnake slid out in a smooth rush, aiming for the Healer’s ankles.  
  
“ _Back_ ,” Harry hissed, and the rattlesnake drew to a stop, gave him a look from flat eyes that nevertheless came across as disappointed, and vanished into the shadows under the chair again. The krait and the rat snake and a coral snake that had added itself to the shadows on his knees rose in defense. Harry brought his hand down sharply, feeling, for a moment, coils before the snakes puffed into smoke and vanished.  
  
In the silence that followed, Harry found just himself sitting there, with the beat of his heart, and blinked. This was the first time he had been alone, without the snakes, in almost a week.  
  
“That’s it,” the Healer breathed, and smiled at him. He was a trim, neat man with short dark hair and grey eyes that reminded Harry of someone, although he couldn’t say who. “That’s what I believe you need to do, Mr. Potter. Resist the snakes as hard as you can, send them away when they come to you. Reject the gift, and it may stop tormenting you. That was the only solution found for the Parselmouths of the past, for them to give up the magic.”  
  
“But I want them to go away already,” Harry whispered, voice cracking. He tried to remember the last time he’d had something to drink, and couldn’t. The cup of tea on his desk had been full. “Don’t you think I _want_ that?”  
  
The Healer stared at him with a faintly grey face, and Harry realized that he must not have spoken in English again. He closed his eyes and thought of books, of Ginny’s mouth when they’d still been dating and she’d whisper his name, how people formed words and not hisses. Then he said it again.  
  
“I know,” the Healer said, and patted his arm. Harry heard a hiss, and repressed the urge to hiss back. Ultimately, that would cause him more trouble than if he just ignored the snakes altogether. “But desire can be channeled by people who know how to help you, now that you’re here. You can purge your mind of _any_ desire to retain this gift, and send it away. Do you see? Part of you probably still wants it, or it wouldn’t have stayed on.”  
  
Harry nodded faintly. “Yeah.” He could see that. He had thought everyone was stupid when they were telling him in second year that Parseltongue was a Dark gift, and he had privately thought that it was a _good_ thing that he could command that snake Malfoy had conjured not to attack Justin, or that he could understand what Nagini was saying when she and Voldemort talked. That had probably translated into thinking Parseltongue was okay, and he hadn’t felt the same revulsion towards it that he did towards his scar or the thought of his parents’ deaths.  
  
But he’d have to learn.  
  
“Good,” said the Healer, and patted Harry on the shoulder again. “My name is Matthew Lyons, by the way, and I’ll be the Healer in charge of your initial training. Shall we get started?”  
  
*  
  
“Oh, Draco, you must have misheard. I don’t think that he could have avoided having his Parseltongue cause him trouble before now; he’s had it so long. And the Ministry would never just march the Golden Boy off to forced confinement in St. Mungo’s. And Weasley wouldn’t discuss it in public.”  
  
Draco leaned back on the couch and grinned. “Liar. You believe me. I know the way you look when you’re excited.”  
  
Pansy’s face, hovering in the fireplace, took on the complex expression it wore when she was deciding whether or not to be offended. In the end, she laughed and nodded. “All right. And I’ll admit the gossip would be _wonderful,_ Draco. But I don’t understand what you mean by wanting to do something else with it. Either the Healers will cure him or he’ll stay in St. Mungo’s for the rest of his life. Or he might commit suicide, I suppose. I hear that’s hard on your mind, the hallucinations that come along with it. Either way, what more can we do than _spread_ the gossip?”  
  
Draco had been considering that, and he had a book open on the couch beside him that gave him some answers. “Apparently, they only have the hallucinations of snakes and so on as long as they reject the gift,” he answered, flipping through the pages of _A Natural History of Parseltongue._ “Once they accept it, that goes away, and the magic is simply part of them. And of course, many of them never have the hallucinations in the first place, because they’re Dark wizards from the beginning.”  
  
“And you think Potter would become a Dark wizard?” Pansy snorted. “ _Potter_?”  
  
“I’ve told you again and again that that particular gesture is unladylike,” Draco informed her primly. “And you didn’t see him, Pansy. I did.” He found himself shuddering for a moment, and closing his eyes, at the memory of the expression on Potter’s still, downturned face. “I think perhaps we could encourage him to embrace it, if only as an alternative to the things they’re going to do at St. Mungo’s. Things that won’t work.”  
  
“Really?” Pansy rested her chin on her hand for a moment and reached up to fluff her dark hair. “I thought that I remembered reading they could cure Parselmouths.”  
  
“Oh, yes,” Draco said. “By turning them into Squibs, or cursing them blind and mute so that they can’t see or speak to snakes again. They’ll tell Potter there’s another cure, and he’ll believe them, and in the end, that’s all it’ll be.” He slammed the book shut and leaned forwards to catch Pansy’s eye. “A fucking _waste._ ”  
  
Pansy blinked. “But why? Surely this is Potter getting what he’s always deserved for rejecting you? I thought you would see it that way, at least.”  
  
“You think a lot of things that aren’t true,” Draco said, but without heat. It was true that Pansy could reasonably think that, with some of the things Draco had said and thought about Potter in the years since the war.  
  
But Draco _had_ matured from the spoilt little brat who had thought there was no honor in life higher than getting Potter in trouble with Umbridge. His tastes in revenge had changed, for one thing. What happened when you killed your enemy? They were dead, and that was all. There was no chance to watch them living with the humiliation, their faces flaming every time they looked at you.  
  
It might make him laugh in his heart to know that Potter was finally succumbing to the Dark, but Potter stripped of his magic, in exile in the Muggle world, would be a Potter Draco would never see. And a Potter cursed blind and mute would probably spend all his time feeling sorry for himself. Or, no, working out how to deal with his disabilities and live a cheerful life despite them. That was more in the Gryffindor style.  
  
And part of Draco’s being more mature was his ability to admit to himself that he _hated_ seeing power go to waste. Even power that someone never used, even power that they denied and hated. Every wizard who chose to go back to the Muggle world, as many Muggleborns did after Hogwarts, was one who diminished magic.   
  
Potter was almost certainly the only Parselmouth in Britain, perhaps one of the few living ones on the planet. To know that that gift had passed out of existence made Draco itch in the way that it would have if he had known the Deathly Hallows were destroyed, or that someone had burned a last rare spellbook, the only one that contained knowledge of charms and hexes that were otherwise lost. And there was no doubt that Potter’s Parseltongue _would_ be lost, under the care of the Healers. They would persuade Potter to one or the other of their extreme solutions. Potter might suggest them himself, even.  
  
Unless he could be made to see that even this was an opportunity. That embracing and living with his Dark gift meant _life,_ and where life lingered, there were chances that should not be yielded.  
  
He opened his eyes and saw Pansy watching him. “This is going to be like when you persuaded Blaise’s mum to teach you about rare poisons, isn’t it?” she said resignedly. “Or when you paid a fortune for Professor Snape’s notes. You want any magical knowledge to survive that you can.”  
  
Draco nodded, and conjured up a smile. He knew Pansy would help him because she was his friend and shared some of the same convictions, but she didn’t take the pleasure in it that he did. She would need some incentive. “Besides, Pansy, think what will happen to the cause of the Dark Arts if we have _Potter_ as a champion.”  
  
From the way that Pansy’s breathing quickened and her eyes dilated a bit, Draco knew he had her.  
  
 _Now I only have to find a way to have Potter, too._


	2. Conversations With Two Kinds of Snakes

  
“This will be your room, Mr. Potter.”  
  
The mediwitch who had escorted him here, who’d said her name was Georgianna Ellman, looked at him once and then away. Harry could only suppose that his eyes were changing somehow. Maybe he was getting the split pupils that some of the books he’d consulted in the past week said happened to all Parselmouths sooner or later.  
  
Or maybe he looked like he was drowning in hallucinations no one else could see. That would do it, too.  
  
“Thank you,” he said, and stepped into the room, avoiding the patch of floor where a king cobra apparently crouched and stared at him. Then he changed his mind and stepped harshly and deliberately on its tail. The snake opened its mouth in what looked like a parody of an agonized yawn, hissed something Harry couldn’t understand, and vanished. Unaccompanied, he went and sat down on the single bed the room contained, looking blankly at the enchanted window that showed snow-covered mountains.  
  
He held his breath, almost not realizing it, listening…  
  
And heard the gentle _click_ of a locking ward that would hold the door motionless better than any merely physical lock could.  
  
Harry closed his eyes and swallowed. He realized this was for the best. He didn’t _want_ to hurt people, but that was the sort of thing uncontrolled wandless magic ended up doing, and he had that now. He would do anything rather than watch another person collapse the way Kipling had, screaming that he was on fire with the poison and clawing at the puncture wounds that had opened up under his fingers.  
  
But part of him still wanted to rebel, to shout that _he_ wasn’t doing this and they should trust him more than that. Wanted to escape and run wild.   
  
He swallowed again, swallowed that part of him, and curled up on the bed. He ignored the way the sheets bent and rustled and a great scaled weight draped over his hips and legs. He didn’t even care what kind of imaginary snake had come to him now. He was just _tired._  
  
 _It makes me almost willing to give up all my magic, if they could get rid of it. Being a Squib would be better than being a murderer._  
  
*  
  
Draco stepped into St. Mungo’s through one of the lesser-used entrances—behind what looked like a weed-choked door in South London—and accepted the cup of tea that a bowing apprentice handed him. There were advantages to being one of the biggest donors to St. Mungo’s and part of the committee that had given approval for the recent expansion of the Janus Thickey Ward.  
  
There might be a few people who suspected that part of Draco’s interest in that ward came from his interest in the Dark Arts in general, and his longing to study his Aunt Bellatrix’s work on the minds of Frank and Alice Longbottom. It was no good knowing the power of the Dark Arts if he didn’t also face the consequences of that power.  
  
But no one had been impolite to him, and so Draco sipped his tea and sat down on the couch in the comfortable private room, decorated in deep blues and greens that always made him feel as if he was floating underwater, while he waited for Healer Chance.  
  
Lydia Chance came through the door a few minutes later, her face set in the same blunt, bulldog expression she always used with him. Draco put the tea down, took a moment to calm his reaction to the sight of her auburn hair, and said, “I heard that Harry Potter was being brought here. Or soon to arrive.”  
  
Chance stopped and looked at him. Then she said, “You ought to know, Mr. Malfoy, that not even _you_ could get through some of the protections we have on his room.”  
  
“Oh, come,” Draco said with gentle remonstrance, folding his hands on his lap as he watched Chance take her place behind her desk. He had always wondered what weapons she might have hidden in the drawers. He hadn’t had the chance to find out yet. “I haven’t asked you for the key to the wards. What I want is a few minutes of private conversation with him.”  
  
Chance sat still, thinking about that. Draco waited some more. He donated Galleons to the Healers, yes, but some of them had much simpler needs. He didn’t know if Chance had those requirements at the moment, but he thought it likely.  
  
She extended her hand. Draco quickly and silently brought a small snakeskin bag out of his pocket, which he tossed to her. As she caught it, small grains rustled. She didn’t sniff at the top of the bag, the way that some unsophisticated users of those seeds did, but her nostrils twitched, and Draco was sure that was the equivalent.  
  
“Yes, Mr. Malfoy, there might be a way for you to visit Mr. Potter,” she said, and peered at some of the paperwork on the desk in front of her. “That doesn’t mean that you can cast a spell in his room, however.”  
  
“Then I will require someone to set up the protections of silence around his room,” Draco said, in the perfectly polite voice that was all most people outside of his inner circles ever heard him use. “And to stand guard. It’s essential that we not be disturbed.”  
  
Chance took another long, still moment to look at him. Draco knew why she did that. Someday, she would decide that the requests he made of her were too much, and that she would be risking not just her job but her conscience—stunted thing that it must be—by letting him do what he asked for.  
  
Draco held her gaze, and smiled. He had precautions in place for the day that she finally made her decision, but that really wasn’t the point. He never asked for much, and he made his requests neat and small and easy to fulfill. He would rather have future help than press a point home out of pride.  
  
 _Most of the time._  
  
Chance nodded and stood. “I’ll escort you myself,” she said. “They would have expected me at Potter’s room sometime in the next hour, anyway.” She picked up a sheaf of paperwork and what looked like a roll of bandages and led him towards the door.  
  
Draco made a mental note of that. Healer Chance’s work was with those who had severely damaged magic, with curses inflicted on them that had drained it or crossed strangely with their own power and thus resulted in unpredictable madness every time they cast a spell. They were probably already thinking about cursing Potter into Squibhood.  
  
 _Not on my watch._  
  
Every trace of that was gone from his face as he bowed and gestured Chance to go on before him. He would retain Potter for the Dark Arts, yes, or at least try to, and learn as much as he could about Parseltongue from him before he lost his magic, if that was what he was determined to do. But he need not alienate his allies. That was the action of a crass man, and no word had ever less applied to him.  
  
*  
  
Harry turned around when he heard someone knock on the door. He didn’t think he had been asleep, but rather in some strange half-waking, half-dozing state where he tried to imagine his future and saw nothing but a blank.  
  
The snake draped around him was an anaconda, and its scales shone more than any Harry had ever seen; it was beautiful. It lifted its head and flicked its tongue out, and then flowed back into place, hissing only when Harry disturbed it by pushing towards the edge of the bed. _You need not fear,_ it told him. _One comes who is a friend._  
  
Harry shut his eyes and felt the pulsing cold in himself. If that was just something mad he was hearing from an equally mad voice, that was one thing. But if it turned out to be _true,_ that suggested his senses were extending, or that on one level, the snakes were real.  
  
He couldn’t take that.   
  
“Mr. Potter?” The voice was unfamiliar, brisk in the way that said its owner had never thought about being anything else. Harry was glad that enough of his Auror instincts remained to let him judge that, at least. “My name is Healer Lydia Chance. I’ve brought someone who wishes to speak to you for a few minutes before I talk to you.”  
  
Harry cast a triumphant glance at the anaconda. That showed what _it_ knew, and that he was just mental. A Healer who sounded like that wouldn’t be a friend. He called back in a rusty voice, something he didn’t remember because it wasn’t important, and he was using all his mental strength to cling to the present moment and the important things right now.  
  
He briefly saw the Healer as the door swung open, but most of his attention fixed on the man who stepped inside with silence wards going up behind him and the door shutting immediately.  
  
 _Malfoy?_  
  
He either said that aloud or his astonished stare did it for him, because Malfoy smiled and nodded. “Potter,” he murmured. “I heard about your Parseltongue taking over your life and your mind. I came to chat.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes. If the news had already spread to someone like _Malfoy,_ who had no reason to pay attention to him, then there were probably articles everywhere now, and people clamoring for him to be put down, and people calling him the next Dark Lord, and—  
  
Then he shook his head, sharply, and told himself to stop it.  
  
 _What does it matter to you? You aren’t going to read those stories; you won’t see those people. You’re here until the Healers decide what’s wrong with you and cure you, and you can always ask not to have the_ Daily Prophet _delivered._  
  
That released some of the icy clutch on his muscles, and he sat back down on the bed and managed to smile at Malfoy. “Come to gloat at the fallen?” he asked. His voice was a croak, but at least he saw from the way Malfoy focused on him that he wasn’t speaking Parseltongue. “I reckon there’s little enough for you to see. It’s not really visible.”  
  
*  
  
 _Yes, it is,_ Draco wanted to say. _How can you not know?_ But then, one of the things that had remained constant about Potter through the years was a congenital lack of attention to his own appearance.  
  
Potter’s eyes looked wider than ever and had a dull sheen that Draco had never seen in them, probably because he had never seen Potter backed into a corner before. His hair had obviously seen more combing by fingers than brushes in the last month. His robes had small holes and tears that Potter could have fixed easily enough with a _Reparo,_ and hadn’t bothered to. His wrists looked as thin as reeds, his body gaunt when he turned and the robes flowed around it. He opened and closed his eyes more rapidly than he should have, too, but he didn’t seem to notice.  
  
“I came to offer you an opportunity,” Draco said, and cast a single, comprehensive Cleaning Charm on the chair that was available, pulling it around in front of him so he could straddle it. Most of the time, he wouldn’t adopt an attitude so casual, but he thought it might win him points with Potter right now. The man had never liked formality, and the Healers would have given him a full dose of that, anyway.   
  
Potter stared at him. Then he rolled his eyes and said in ridiculous singsong, “No, you may not have an interview with me, or write my biography, or talk to me about your charity, or have my autograph, or take my picture.”  
  
Draco smiled, and let his appreciation of Potter’s humor show in the smile. “That’s not what I want,” he said. “Do you have to say that a lot?”  
  
Potter stared at him again, but a faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “You wouldn’t _believe_ how many times,” he said. “And thank God for that. Here I was thinking that you’d gone completely mental.”  
  
“You may still think that,” Draco said. “But I am quite serious when I tell you that you should consider something other than Healing for your Parseltongue difficulties.”  
  
“Oh, _that’s_ why you’re here,” Potter said, and perceptibly brightened. “To tell me to let the hallucinations go on until I fall over a cliff or something. I _knew_ it would make sense if I just waited long enough.”  
  
Draco met his eyes, and smiled a little, and said, “It’s nice to know that you’re still sane about one thing. Isn’t it?”  
  
Potter’s hands clenched at once, on a wand that wasn’t there, and he made a little noise that told Draco his defenses were even more broken-down than Draco had thought. Then he just braced himself and said, “Say your piece and leave, Malfoy. It won’t matter, anyway, since I already came to the Healers.”  
  
“Let me guess,” Draco went on, sliding into the supremely soft voice that Pansy had told him was his most persuasive. “They’ve told you that you can focus to get rid of the snakes speaking to you, to avoid calling them, to avoid hurting other people. That there’s some secret and special cure that you can have if you just concentrate enough.”  
  
Potter froze and stared at him in a way that reminded Draco this man was still an Auror, and he shifted his own position to get his hands near his wand.  
  
“So you know something about the way they treat insane Parselmouths.” Potter twisted his shoulders back in a defiant pose. “Fine. I reckon there must be _some_ information on it. Got that from the Dark Lord’s diaries, did you, little Death Eater?” His eyes flickered to Draco’s left arm.  
  
Draco didn’t get angry, because Potter was the weak one in this situation, and he only challenged Draco in order to try (futilely) for a higher position. “No,” he said. “Books in my father’s library. Their ‘cure’ is a lie, Potter. They’ll study you, oh yes, to have more information on Parselmouths on hand, but they’ll take your magic or your sight and speech. Those are the only methods someone has ever found to strip a wizard of that inherent gift.”  
  
Potter sat upright. Draco watched him, the way that he was almost slipping off the bed despite the tight grip he had on the blankets, and smiled.  
  
*  
  
 _No. No. That can’t be right. Ron would have said something about it. Healer Lyons would have said something about it. No._  
  
And, Harry reminded himself swiftly, Malfoy had always lied to him. He had lied to get Harry in trouble, he had lied to make Harry do stupid things like show up for a duel late at night, and he had lied because it delighted him. There was that whole mess with Rita Skeeter during fourth year—  
  
 _But he also told me the truth—as he understood it—about Sirius and my parents. In that case, he thought telling me the truth would hurt worse than the lie. Always assume that he means to hurt you._  
  
In this case, it meant it _could_ be the truth. And Ron and Hermione loved him, but they had no more idea about the usual treatments for Parselmouths in hospital than Harry did. Only that, at some point in the past, the Healers had managed to make Parselmouths stop being a problem.  
  
Which could, yes, involve “solutions” like the ones that Malfoy was talking about.  
  
Harry breathed in, and out, and fixed Malfoy with a steady gaze through the fading remnants of his shock. He wondered what Malfoy would say if he knew that his chair, to Harry’s sight, was draped with shining vipers, blue and green and black. Harry didn’t know what kind all of them were, but he knew they could kill if they bit. If he commanded them to bite.  
  
That, mad though it was, gave him the strength to meet Malfoy’s eyes and say, “I’m willing to give up my magic rather than hurt someone else.” Malfoy’s lip curled, and Harry smiled meanly at him. “Besides, you’re wrong. Those aren’t the only fates for Parselmouths, as your experience with _Voldemort_ should have told you. He was murderous and insane, but I don’t think it was because of his Parseltongue. I can live with it, somehow—”  
  
He stopped, because Malfoy had leaned forwards, and his body and his chair said, “ _Ah_ ,” even more than his throat did.  
  
“You don’t know how the Dark Lord managed to survive being driven insane by his Parseltongue?” Malfoy was smiling, and dark embers burned in the back of his eyes, in a way that made Harry sure that he would be sorry he had raised the issue. But he stared back, because that was better than looking at the anaconda loosely draped over the bed behind him and the spitting cobras that had begun to twine around the doorframe. “You _truly_ do not know?”  
  
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” Harry told him, and shut his eyes. That didn’t diminish the hissing voices in his ears. He wondered how the Healers would take away his ability to _hear_ snakes even if they cursed him dumb and blind.  
  
“He was a Dark wizard,” Malfoy said. “Parseltongue is a Dark gift, and those who survive are the ones who embrace their gifts. Turn to the Dark, Potter. It’s the way to survive.”  
  
Harry gave a small snort. “This is pathetic, Malfoy,” he said. “Voldemort made more convincing recruitment speeches than you.”  
  
“Oh, I didn’t expect to convince you today.” Malfoy stood up and brushed imaginary dust off his sleeves. Harry wondered if he had felt the caressing forked tongues of the vipers and sought to remove their touch as well. The vipers didn’t react to Malfoy as they did to Ron and the Healers, though. Their sway was slower, almost— _approving._  
  
 _Of course they would approve of someone evil, like them,_ Harry told himself, and jerked his head around to focus on Malfoy again. “Then why come and visit me?”  
  
“Because I thought that you didn’t know what your options were.” Malfoy looked at him and smiled. “And I was right.”  
  
“You know _nothing_ about me,” Harry said, and then shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead. His scar didn’t hurt, but a blinding crown of pain suddenly seemed to squeeze his temples, and he lay back with a groan.  
  
“It’ll get worse,” Malfoy’s voice said, cool and pitiless. “You have no idea how much worse. Snakes all you can see, your body unable to move except by slithering, your bones seeming to shape and reform themselves, your sense of balance gone. Your comprehension of English gone. Embrace it, Potter. Don’t fight it. _Control_ the snakes. That’s the only way you can live as a wizard in full control of himself.”  
  
Harry would have loved to say something cutting, but the pain stabbed down into his mouth and into his tongue, as though trying to force him to grow fangs. By the time he thought of something to say, the door had shut.  
  
No Healer came in. Perhaps Malfoy had told them how he was acting right now, and they had decided to leave him alone until he recovered some sense.  
  
This time, Harry wondered if he would. In addition to the pain gripping his head, every time he opened his eyes he saw flickering patterns in the air that resembled scales in shape and color, and overlaid everything he looked at. He could hardly see the serpents through them, although he felt it when they piled on top of him, vipers curled around his throat and cobras on his arms and anaconda draped across his legs. They felt more solid and real than ever.  
  
 _I don’t have to yield to it,_ he thought, and dug down deep for the concentration that Healer Lyons had talked about, the focus that had enabled him to banish some of the snakes earlier. _I can live and die a Light wizard._  
  
If Malfoy was right, “die” was his only real choice.  
  
 _He was lying to hurt me. He must have been._  
  
*  
  
Draco nodded to Chance and walked away, his steps so light that he felt as if he were floating, his hair drifting around his head, his eyes filled with lightning. He sucked in a deep breath of the clear air and spread his palm flat in front of him, then closed his fingers in.  
  
He had a grip on Potter’s soul. He had seen the man’s desperation, smelled it rolling off him, sweat-rich, sweat-sweet. He was going mad, or so it would seem to him, and the Healers could do nothing for him. It would increase until he took one of the two cures they offered to him.  
  
Or until he embraced the life that was still strong in him, as a man of twenty-seven who hadn’t even lived ten years past the war.  
  
Draco performed a little dance step in the middle of the corridor, once he was sure that no one was watching him. He felt as he had when he’d collected the last of Severus’s notes from a drunken wizard who had no idea of their worth.  
  
It was still possible that he might not own Harry Potter, might not lead him at last into the study of the Dark Arts that he had so often disdained. The man had surprised Draco before, with stubborn flashes of stupid will.  
  
But to know that he was close to it, revenge and ownership all at once…  
  
 _And to have one of the world’s few living Parselmouths with me is not to be sneered at._


	3. Slither

  
“I need you to do better than this, Harry.”  
  
Healer Lyons’s voice was chiding. Harry tried to respond to it, breathing deeply and descending into his soul—clearing his mind—the way that Lyons had shown him. He had a much gentler way of doing it than Snape had ever shown in Occlumency, and he had put so much faith in Harry, spent so much time with him. It would be horrible to disappoint him.  
  
But when he opened his eyes, they were still there. Cobras hung from the ceiling and crawled slowly up the walls, in ways that said there were masses of other cobras beneath them. Vipers coated every inch of his arms and leaned their heads against his neck. An adder had taken up a permanent position near Healer Lyons, mouth opened and fangs poised. Harry tried to tell himself that no real snake could do that, but that just made it all the more disgusting and depressing.  
  
And a giant snake with human eyes had taken Healer Lyons’s place. It leaned towards him and stared with a flat gaze, and Harry had no way of knowing if the words that reached him were Parseltongue or English. “You still see them?”  
  
“Yes,” Harry whispered, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry.” His pulse beat dully in his temples, and he raised his hand to rub at his face, ignoring the slight sensation of weight on his arm. He hated this, he _hated_ it, and he was beginning to think that it didn’t matter if Malfoy was right. Get rid of his magic—it was a horrible idea, but at least he would be able to see again, and be sane again.  
  
“It’s not your fault,” Healer Lyons said gently. “Perhaps I need to read my notes on the ways that we have healed Parselmouths in the past again. There is no reason to think that it’s _your_ fault when I might have missed something.”  
  
Harry took a hard, fast breath, and then decided that he might as well ask before he lost his nerve. “Has anyone—has anyone actually managed to concentrate the snakes away? Or is the only thing I can do become a Squib?” He had considered asking Lyons about them cursing him mute and blind, but that would reveal more detailed knowledge than he was comfortable with, knowledge that he should have had no way of getting.  
  
 _And knowledge that you have no_ business _getting. For God’s sake, are you really going to lie like Malfoy with people who are trying to help you?_  
  
The nice thing about feeling that he was turning evil was that he at least got to keep his eyes closed. He wouldn’t see anyone human if he opened them, anyway.  
  
There was a long pause that Harry tried to tell himself was compassionate, not startled, and then Lyons murmured, “It is true that some of our Parselmouths treated here became Squibs, more out of a desire not to be a danger to anyone else than because they had to. But of course, no one would wish that to happen to you, Harry.”  
  
 _Except me, maybe, if there’s no other way to stop it._ Harry shivered and tried to ignore the half-kiss of forked tongues against his mouth. “But is there anyone who’s managed to concentrate the snakes away? I just want to know that.”  
  
“Of course there are,” Lyons said, and now he sounded as though he was tapping his fingers against the arm of his chair. Harry didn’t dare listen too closely in case it metamorphosed into the rattling of a hollow tail. “I wouldn’t have suggested the treatment if I knew that it wouldn’t work.”  
  
Harry swallowed. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I just don’t know how to deal with this—”  
  
“In _English,_ Harry, please.”  
  
Harry ground his teeth and wanted to shout. But what good would that do in the end? He would probably only prove himself a horrible person like the one Malfoy wanted him to turn into, like the Healers thought he was turning into.  
  
He thought again of human lips forming words, and then said, “How common is it that people manage to concentrate the snakes away? Do you have to be good at Occlumency first before you can do it?”  
  
There was shocked silence from Healer Lyons’s direction, and shocked silence inside Harry’s own head, which might or might not be an improvement over the hisses. _I didn’t mean to say that. I really didn’t._  
  
“It is not very common,” Healer Lyons said at last. “But Occlumency skill has nothing to do with it. Not desiring the Parseltongue does. I would say that five percent of all Parselmouths have managed to recover this way.”  
  
 _Five percent. And how do I know that my luck is going to hold this time?_ Harry ran a hand through his hair, making his fringe stand out from the scar. He heard Healer Lyons catch his breath sharply, perhaps at the sight of it, but at the moment, he couldn’t be bothered to care about whether the scar reminded someone else of Voldemort, even though he was usually careful of things like that.  
  
 _Well, that’s the point of all this, isn’t it? A Dark wizard doesn’t have to care about other people’s emotions, and that’s what I’m becoming._  
  
Unless he wanted to become blind and mute, or a Squib. And although he had told himself that would be preferable to becoming Dark, he remembered the way that Malfoy had spoken, so cool and confident, and wondered.  
  
 _But there isn’t any sharp dividing line, is there? I could tell myself I was only embracing the snakes and the Parseltongue to save my own life, and then I would wake up one day and find that I’d become like Voldemort without meaning to. Once I start down that road, I can’t turn back._  
  
“If you would turn your attention,” Healer Lyons began, but he fell silent when Harry pushed a hand towards him.  
  
“I don’t want to do this right now,” Harry whispered. “I want to sleep. Can you leave me alone and—I don’t know, just let me relax for a while? You can lock the door. I won’t try to break out, and I won’t speak to the snakes willingly.” _Brother,_ they sang in his head, and they sounded sad and disapproving. He ignored that. There was no reason to think that these imaginary snakes were so different from real ones that they could understand English. Maybe they only understood his emotions.  
  
“The longer you put off learning this, the harder it will be to learn later,” Lyons told him, voice cool and inflexible now. The same tone that Malfoy had had in his voice, Harry thought, but so different.  
  
“I know that,” Harry whispered. “But I’m getting frustrated right now, and that won’t help me to master it, either. Leave me alone.” He turned away and ducked his head into the pillow, still without opening his eyes. He would see the snakes if he did that, and he simply _couldn’t_ deal with them. Not at this moment, maybe not ever.  
  
Lyons hesitated, then said, “Very well,” and went out. Harry found himself listening again, and yes, there was the click of the locking ward.  
  
 _They don’t have the right to imprison me like this. I could destroy them if I wanted to, and no one would blame me._  
  
But Ron would. Hermione would. And Harry would blame himself. He was an Auror. It was his duty to lock away people who were a danger to others, even if that danger came from their own madness or uncontrollable magic and wasn’t their fault.  
  
The adder who’d been watching Healer Lyons curled up under his chin. Hating the fact that he could tell the difference between them simply from the feeling of their scales, Harry drifted off to sleep.  
  
*  
  
“That doesn’t sound very promising for a first venture.”  
  
Draco snorted and leaned across the table to clink his glass with Pansy’s. “Potter’s still under the delusion that the Healers care about getting him back to normal, when in reality they want him to go away and stop bothering them, the same way they’ve wanted that for all the Parselmouths they’ve treated down the centuries. Once he overcomes that, I think he’ll come around to my way of thinking very quickly.”  
  
Pansy sighed and trained a curl around one finger. “And then what, Draco? What are you going to do with _Harry Potter_ next to you?”  
  
Draco smiled at her. “What couldn’t I do? And I thought you’d agreed, anyway.”  
  
“I agreed that we shouldn’t let them strip him of his Parseltongue and lessen Dark magic in the world that way.” Pansy leaned forwards. “But I think it would be best if you let him go after this, Draco. When they come hunting him, that means they’ll be following him, not you.”  
  
Draco snorted. “You and I both had mentors in the Dark Arts, Pansy. It’s necessary, to learn the paths and prevent anyone from succumbing to the strangeness of the power at first. Potter wouldn’t have anyone if I simply let him go, and he’d probably end up insane or dead after all, neither of which fits with what I want. I’ll be his mentor.”  
  
“And then what?” Pansy’s fingers rapped the table and the chair, her glass and the edge of her plate. Draco hadn’t seen her do that in a long time, and kept his eyebrows raised and his gaze on her while he poured himself a new glass of wine. “You can’t keep him with you forever, Draco. Someone will _notice_.”  
  
Draco blinked, then smiled, and held his glass up to her again, although she didn’t move hers to toast him. “Don’t you understand, Pansy? That’s the _point_.”  
  
She froze, staring at him. Then she leaned back and shook her head. “Do you want to explain that one to me again? Because you’re right, I don’t understand how that can be the point when we’ve always gone out of our way to make sure that the Dark Arts don’t involve us getting noticed for them.”  
  
Draco sighed. “Plenty of people practice the Dark Arts, know about them, and will give you credit for using them as long as you’re polite and discreet about it,” he said. “But I dream of something different. The Dark Arts given the place they deserve, and offered as another branch of magic, with the proper precautions, the way that Potions is considered. Potions can be as dangerous as the Dark Arts, but we teach it all the same. And the model they have at Durmstrang shows that wizards can practice them openly and yet not have their entire society dissolve into chaos.”  
  
Pansy hunched her back. “That won’t work here. The memory of the Dark Lord has poisoned too many people against them.”  
  
“That’s part of the reason why I want the only person whose name is as powerful as the Dark Lord’s with me,” Draco said peaceably. “Harry Potter turned Dark wouldn’t go as far as I wnt, but I think he would want to make the world safe for himself. He wouldn’t be content with hiding forever.”  
  
Pansy shook her head. “That makes sense, and it might work. _If_ Potter will ever agree to help you. I think it’s more likely that he would go Dark and then keep acting on his own.”  
  
“He must see that simply walking away from hospital isn’t possible.” Draco finished off the last of his wine. “He’ll need my help to escape, at least. And after that…it all lies in making my offer as attractive as I can.”  
  
Pansy snorted. “When have you _ever_ been good at that, where Potter’s concerned?”  
  
Draco laughed. “There lies the difference between the boy I was and the man I am,” he said, and cradled the stem of his wineglass in his hands. “I’ve learned a few things about persuasion, and a few things about compromise. There are many things I want from Potter, but I’m willing to put up with not having a few of them in order to have the things I want more.”  
  
Pansy gave him a skeptical look. Draco only smiled into the remnants of his wine.  
  
*  
  
Harry woke with a faint gasp, and opened his eyes to see the snakes were gone from the room. His hands shook as he reached for his glasses and slammed them onto his face. Perhaps now, he could finally do something normal like go to the bathroom without tripping over imaginary serpents all the way.  
  
He eased his feet over the side of the bed and then tried to take a step.  
  
The world tilted and went away from him. Harry found himself on his side, staring at the open door of the bathroom less than five steps away. He shook his head and tried to remember the last time he had eaten something. He felt faint and dizzy. Probably he’d just moved too fast when he’d been asleep for a little while.  
  
But when he tried to get his hands beneath him, they didn’t want to move, either. They didn’t seem to _exist._ Harry turned his head and tried to scream, but only a hiss slid out of a mouth that didn’t seem to have lips, either.  
  
And that hiss called the snakes. They danced out from beneath the bed, shining sidewinders with their delicate movements, thick black water snakes who sifted through the air as if it was a lake, a golden-brown anaconda that coiled itself near Harry’s head and licked his ear.  
  
 _This is the way that you move now, brother. Sideways and around. Your body can get a grip on the floor. You only have to want to do it._  
  
 _Wanting—_ right, that was the same thing Healer Lyons had said to him, that he only had to want to get rid of the Parseltongue and it would happen. Harry turned his head to the side, hissed a refusal, and once again tried to get his hands beneath him. He would crawl to the bathroom if he had to, but he wouldn’t listen to _them_ anymore.  
  
There were no hands, or else there was no balance. Hell, with the snakes he was seeing everywhere, it was entirely possible that he just couldn’t see his hands, or that they were bound to his back somehow. He felt a hysterical giggle building up to slip out of his mouth, but it came out only as a hiss.   
  
_Brother. We love you._ One of the sidewinders lay along his neck for a moment, and then pulled back and extended itself slowly, repeating the way it used to move so that he could see every gesture of it. _Do this, and you will be able to move._  
  
And hadn’t Malfoy said something like that? That Harry would start slithering, or that his body would reform itself, or something?  
  
Humiliated tears slipped down Harry’s face as he again tried to get his arms under him. He would still rather surrender to the Healers than to the snakes and Malfoy. In the end, they would only use him to hurt people, and Harry was far more against that than he was against the Healers keeping him locked up here.  
  
There was a medley of sounds somewhere beyond the hissing, but Harry didn’t pay attention to it, knowing it probably wasn’t real. Then cool hands descended and latched onto his sides, and _that_ was so unusual that Harry turned his head and opened his eyes and saw them as they were, rather than as hallucinations.  
  
“Potter?”  
  
Malfoy’s face hovered above him. Harry stared at him, and forgot about whether Malfoy had bribed the Healers to get in here, or whether he had come to taunt Harry again. He already had all the taunting material he would ever need, seeing Harry cry like that. “Help me,” he said, or cried. At the moment, he needed that more than he needed anything else.  
  
*  
  
Draco didn’t understand the Parseltongue slipping out of Potter’s mouth, but the meaning was obvious. He locked his hands beneath Potter’s body and slowly supported him up until he was leaning against the bed. Potter kept his legs twined around one another and his hands rigidly unmoving at his sides, though, and Draco didn’t understand _that_ until he leaned in and looked at Potter’s eyes.  
  
There was a slit pupil in the middle of each one of them.  
  
Draco shivered, and didn’t need to name all the emotions in that gesture, even to himself. Ah. So. Potter had started to go through the changes that Draco had warned him about, much faster than Draco had thought he would. Either he had been hiding the destruction the Parseltongue was wreaking on him for longer than Draco had thought, or he was simply so powerful that his gift rebounded on him with worse consequences.  
  
Draco kept his voice soothing as he said, “I’m going to touch your hand, Potter. Squeeze back when you can feel it.” He reached out and captured one of the callused hands that, unsurprisingly, wore no rings. They would be a disadvantage for an Auror.  
  
It took so long that Draco began to wonder whether his bargain with Chance would hold, but finally Potter’s fingers cramped around Draco’s.  
  
He turned his drowning face towards Draco’s, and the tears had stopped, the pupil in his left eye rounding again. “Malfoy,” he whispered.  
  
Draco nodded. “You still have hands and legs,” he said, deliberately soothing and calm. “You can still walk. My guess is that the snakes were simply impatient for you to join them fully.”  
  
Potter shut his eyes. “I don’t want to,” he said, a hiss of its own while still being English. “There’s—there’s so much that I want to do, and it isn’t going to be accomplished by dying here or getting rid of my magic.”  
  
Draco smiled, certain that Potter wouldn’t see it at the moment. “Where were you going?” he asked, and then looked around and saw the open door. “Well, come, then. Can you walk?”  
  
Potter needed to hop the first few steps, but then his legs fell apart as though chopped in two, and he limped stiffly to the bathroom. He closed the door behind him, but Draco shut his eyes and leaned against the wall, letting his ears tell him what Potter was doing while he prepared his next assault.  
  
Potter was close to the edge, and had expressed, of his own free will, the desire to live instead of surrender. That meant Draco only had to make what he offered more attractive than the idea of Potter breaking out on his own—which Draco didn’t think he could do, anyway.  
  
The door opened. Draco stood up and turned around, ready to prepare more arguments if he needed to, but he didn’t think he would. Potter was on the brink of convincing himself, which was always the best thing in cases like this.  
  
*  
  
Harry came out seeing normally, except for the shadows that danced in the corners of his vision and always would. Perhaps Malfoy’s reminding him that his legs and arms existed had restored his sight in some ways.  
  
Malfoy stood up when he saw Harry coming and looked at him with a slight smile. Harry stared at him, and saw the same smugness that he had known for years, the sharp way he inclined his head, the cheekbones that always looked as if they could cut, the way his fingers worked as if he would break something.  
  
“You see now?” Malfoy asked quietly. “Did the Healers warn you about these things, as I tried to?”  
  
Harry only shook his head, wordless. He had to wonder if Malfoy had cast a spell that allowed Harry to see him, but that only begged the question of why the Healers hadn’t cast the same spell. Malfoy reached out and laid a hand on Harry’s arm in the next second, leading him back towards the bed.  
  
Harry sat down and took a deep breath, staring at Malfoy. He wanted to ask several questions, and for once Malfoy didn’t seem inclined to insult him. He only hovered there, his eyes on Harry’s face as though he thought he could learn about his Parseltongue by studying the pores in his skin or something.  
  
“So what’s the difference between Dark in the way that you are and the way that Voldemort was?” he asked abruptly. “Is it even possible for a Parselmouth to be one and not the other?”  
  
Malfoy dipped his head and gave Harry what looked like a delighted smile, which made Harry simply stare. He had never even _imagined_ such an expression on Malfoy’s face. He wondered if he was more befuddled by it being there at all or by it looking so normal.  
  
“Dark means willing to practice Dark Arts,” Malfoy said calmly. “To accede to self-control. To take risks that other wizards don’t. There isn’t much risk in a household Cleaning Charm that scrubs the dust off your clothes. There’s a lot in a spell that allows you to see inside your own mind and confront your deepest fears and fantasies.”  
  
Harry shivered and turned his head away from a silver-grey snake creeping up to lie alongside him in the corner of his vision. “Then—there is some risk to the Dark Arts? The Ministry has a reason for banning them?”  
  
“Some of them yes, some of them no,” Malfoy said, and gave him another smile of delight, this time like a teacher looking proudly on a promising pupil. “There are spells of torture and sacrifice that _we_ would prefer not to use as well as the Ministry preferring that we not use them.” Harry thought of reminding him that he had just outed himself as a Dark wizard in front of an Auror, but he kept silent, because who would listen to Harry right now? “Those are Dark. But so is the spell to look inside your mind I mentioned, and the spell to summon your ancestral spirits and bargain with them, and the ability to create servants out of your own blood. Dark wizards are as willing to put _themselves_ in danger’s way as others. Insane wizards like the Dark Lord don’t take risks if they can help it, but torture others and make them take the chances.”  
  
Harry swallowed. “That would fit in well with me,” he whispered. “With my personality, I mean. I’ve always taken risks.”  
  
Malfoy abruptly dropped to one knee in front of Harry and clasped one of his hands with both of his. Startled, Harry tried to pull away, but Malfoy might not even have noticed. He only stared into Harry’s eyes, and Harry found himself staring back.  
  
“That is the reason that I think you could make a proper Dark wizard,” Malfoy whispered back to him. “And why I think that you need to become one. You can’t control this Parseltongue gift until you do. The snakes will hurt someone else, or you, because you fight the magic. You need to _master_ it, force it to bend to your will. Another difference between Dark wizards and mad ones. Dark wizards walk the paths and stay focused. Insane wizards stray from them and do whatever they want.”  
  
He stood up and bowed. “I’ll leave you to think it over, Potter. But you already have one slit pupil. I wouldn’t think about it too long.”  
  
He slipped out. Harry lay back on his bed, eyes shut, and listened to the hissing. With one part of himself, he thought that almost all of what Malfoy did was probably intended to manipulate him, including the dramatic gestures that he’d ended his visit with.  
  
But at the same time, he wanted the life Malfoy had promised him. It wasn’t the one he would have chosen, but it was the one that seemed available to him. And he did, still, want so much to live. To live as a wizard, to live as himself. It might be selfish, but there it was.  
  
 _Is that good enough?_  
  
He lay there, with his hands lightly clenching, staring at the ceiling, until the next Healer’s visit.


	4. A Cloud of Snakes

  
“Malfoy.”  
  
Draco turned around and smiled over his shoulder. He had come to the Ministry for one of his frequent meetings with the Head Auror, but the lift was slow, and he could appreciate the benefits of a distraction. “Weasley,” he said, inclining his head. “Was there something you wanted to speak to me about?” From the way Weasley was bearing down on him, his cheeks stretched and red, Draco knew what the answer was, but it always paid to pretend to be a bit stupid.   
  
“ _Yes,”_ Weasley said, clipped, and reached out towards Draco’s arm.  
  
Draco watched, and waited. When Weasley’s fingers actually touched Draco’s skin, there was a slight pop, softer than the one that a firework would have made but otherwise similar, and a faint flash of green. Weasley stared, cradling his numb hand, and then turned his head and stared at Draco.  
  
Draco shrugged a little. “Since the war, people _have_ tried to kill me, you know. On both sides.” He made no mention of how the spell was there in case _anyone_ he didn’t like tried to touch him. Weasley would figure that out or not. Draco had the advantage in any contest between them that didn’t involve pure Gryffindor bravery—which meant any contest. “You don’t have to pull me along. I’m perfectly willing to accompany you.”  
  
Weasley did some more staring, of the kind that probably impressed the stupid criminals he dealt with. Draco was a different species from them, and only looked back, mild and condescending, until Weasley tossed a curt gesture over his shoulder and stormed away. Draco followed.  
  
The Ministry had hundreds of tiny rooms tucked away in it, meeting rooms and interrogation rooms and temporary cells and offices that had fallen out of use when their occupants died or moved on. Draco had mapped all of them and knew the one that Weasley led him to, off the Atrium. It had a door that didn’t lock properly and a secret door in the corner that led straight into a tunnel. It also had a single chair, and Draco took it before Weasley could command him to do so, arranging his robes around his legs.  
  
Weasley’s muscles bulged at the back of his neck, but he said nothing. He leaned forwards, braced his hands on the single table that the room also boasted, and stared at Draco.  
  
“You’ll probably want better light,” Draco murmured.  
  
Weasley said, “What?” He clamped his lips a moment later and blew air out through his nostrils as though disappointed that Draco had managed to hook the word out of him.   
  
“For when you paint my portrait, I mean,” Draco said, and swept his head in a half-bow. “Because, somehow, I think that there are only two reasons you would be looking at me that intently. And I have too much respect for your _lovely_ wife to ever indulge the other.”  
  
Weasley’s neck muscles bulged again. Then he said, “I want to know why you’re visiting Harry, Malfoy.”  
  
So someone had noticed, then. Well, Draco wasn’t surprised. If he had spies in hospital, there was no reason that someone else couldn’t have them, too.  
  
He arranged his robes again, and then said, “The case interests me. The last Parselmouth I’m aware of was the Dark Lord, and I think you’ll agree that his conduct was not exactly conducive to much study.”  
  
Weasley’s lip curled slightly down, exposing his teeth. It would have been more impressive if Draco had been afraid of charging Gryffindors. “You want to _research_ him.”  
  
Draco nodded. “Before the inevitable collapse into insanity. That’s why our ancestors thought all Parselmouths were Dark, you know. Because the gift would bring the serpents, and that would bring the madness.” He kept his eyes steady on Weasley’s face as he lied, because that would help give the impression of honesty, and because he was fascinated by the way that small things were beginning to tic in Weasley’s face. “Slytherin and his preoccupation with letting a giant snake loose in the school. The Dark Lord and his plans to rule the Muggle world. And Potter and his…well, I don’t know yet what form his insanity would take, but it’s interesting to contemplate.”  
  
He stopped, because Weasley had a wand pointing at his face. Draco very carefully did not blink, and reminded himself that the perils of manipulating a Gryffindor with emotions came from it leading to situations like this.  
  
“You don’t say that,” Weasley whispered. “You don’t talk about him. You don’t visit him again.”  
  
Draco nodded. He would have to find some more secure entrance to hospital.  
  
“You make me _sick_ ,” Weasley said, backing away as though that wasn’t the only thing Draco did, and then folding his arms and staring at him. “That’s a _human being_ you’re talking about. But you don’t see him that way, do you?” He began to pace back and forth. Draco followed every stride with interest, watching for indications of the Auror training Weasley had gone through. That would be important if he turned into one of their pursuers after Draco stole Potter from under his nose. “You just see him as a source of information.”  
  
“What else should he be to me?”  
  
Weasley spun around and, this time, vaulted the table and laid his wand directly against Draco’s throat. Draco knew, then, that he had managed just the right combination of gentleness and indifference in his words. He sat there, not swallowing, and not blinking, and with his hand, in his lap, on his wand that was under his robes. With it, he cast a nonverbal charm that made the blood flee his cheeks, presenting Weasley with the white and waxy mask that he would want to find on the face of a terrified Slytherin.  
  
“Maybe when you can _dream_ of answering that question with something approaching the reality,” Weasley whispered, “then you’ll deserve what he did for you.”  
  
Draco shut his eyes, and reflected to himself that he would probably have to teach Potter how to lie. It wouldn’t do them any good, as wizards who needed to practice the Dark Arts and wanted to practice them openly, to tell the truth all the time. But it was easier to conceal your emotions with your eyes closed, and at the same time have the one confronting you think that you were simply afraid or overpowered.  
  
Weasley stood in front of him for a long time, and Draco wondered if he would have to make a verbal submission. It was tiresome, but he had done more tiresome things in his time, and for worse reasons.  
  
But at last Weasley pulled back, and he heard the soft sound of Weasley’s wand falling into his robe pocket. “You’re pathetic,” Weasley said, and stormed out of the room. The door rebounded from the wall.  
  
Draco opened his eyes and considered the path where he had walked. Then he shrugged, and smiled, and stood, and made his way towards the lifts and his delayed appointment with the Head Auror.  
  
*  
  
“You can do this if you concentrate.”  
  
“That’s all anyone’s told me since I arrived here,” Harry snapped, keeping his eyes closed because the snakes were particularly bad this morning. He was seeing adders with cobras’ heads and rattlesnakes’ tails now, and hallucinations floated through the air and piled on top of one another in scudding drifts of color. “But what no one will tell me is _how_ to do it.”  
  
There was a moment of silence, and he listened to Healer Chance’s quill rapping her parchment. Then she said, “I don’t see what else we can tell you, Mr. Potter. To concentrate is to concentrate, and you must know how to do it if you got through the Auror training program, which, I am _given_ to understand, is rigorous.”  
  
It sounded as if she might be reconsidering that opinion. Harry ground his teeth and reminded himself that he wanted to talk about Parseltongue, not individual Healers’ opinions of Aurors. “How likely do you think it is that I’ll manage to concentrate them all away and have a normal life? The Parseltongue will still be there, won’t it, even if I never use it again? It could still leak out and influence my actions.”  
  
Silence that Harry couldn’t read, because it promptly filled up with the soft lisping voices he wanted to ignore in any case. Then Chance murmured, “If you plug a well, then the water cannot leak out, as long as the seal is tight.”  
  
“But I thought I _had_ it sealed,” Harry said, and drove his hands into the bed beside him, for a moment before he calmed and felt able to keep on talking. “Why did it suddenly show up now? I hadn’t used it for a long time, except when the criminals we chased had guard snakes that needed to be talked down, and now it suddenly decides to do this?”  
  
“It is a mistake to talk of the Parseltongue as ‘deciding’ anything,” Chance said, her voice rattling the approved terms into place like someone talking through a mouthful of rocks. “That is to give it credit for an independent will that it does not possess, and to see it as the enemy and not part of you. You should not think—”  
  
“ _Fuck_ what you think I should think!” Harry spat, and opened his eyes. “I want _answers!_ ”  
  
The world in front of him swam in snakes, and parts of snakes: stretched jaws, looping bodies, soaring scale-shaped patterns of light and color. Chance resembled a giant snake, the way that Lyons had yesterday, but without the human eyes this time. Harry had to admit that she made a handsome bushmaster.  
  
“This is not the way forwards, Mr. Potter,” the snake said, its lidless mouth and hissing voice prim like the Healer’s.  
  
“I want to know why my Parseltongue suddenly showed up and started doing this to me,” Harry snarled at her, and knew that he didn’t sound sane. Well, that was fucking _fine,_ he didn’t _feel_ that way, either, and they treated him as dangerous either way, so he might as well talk the way he wanted to. “You haven’t mentioned that. You’ve very _carefully_ not mentioned that. And you haven’t talked to me about what I should do to get rid of it except concentrate, and not desire. No one could want this less than I do! You think I _want_ to be crazy, and corrupted? And I won’t be, if you would fucking _tell_ me what is going on!”  
  
Chance stared at him, and Harry thought he could see a widening in her serpentine eyes even though the human ones were hidden. Then she said, “Mr. Potter, do you understand that that was entirely in Parseltongue? You are falling further into the grip of the Dark. I could not answer you even if I wished to.”  
  
 _Liar,_ sighed the half-boa hanging from the ceiling above Harry’s head, and sang the kraits on his pillow. _She is lying._  
  
“I think you’re lying,” Harry said, and knew that he didn’t imagine the faint gasp from her direction. And to react that way to what he said, she would have to understand it. “And I want you to tell me _why_. What is so horrible about the answers to my questions? Do you want me to write a signed statement saying that what happens to me isn’t your fault before you take my magic or my sight and speech? Is that what you want?”  
  
“What?” Chance whispered, her voice aching.  
  
“What happened to other Parselmouths whose gifts appeared after lying dormant for a long time?” Harry snapped. “I think that you ought to be able to answer that question even if you can’t answer the others.”  
  
Silence, and Harry could _feel_ the balance of her mind shifting, could feel her deciding what to tell him and what not. He cocked his head, and the heads of the snakes around him—the ones who had heads—cocked, too. He paused, and wondered for a moment what would happen if he tried to deliberately control their motions. So far, the only time he had tried to do that was when the rattlesnake had gone after Healer Lyons.  
  
 _You’ll hurt someone, is what will happen._  
  
 _And you’ll hurt someone if you thrash around without control,_ said a voice that sounded like Malfoy’s and might have come from a snake or the inside of his own head. As if there was a difference at this point.  
  
“Fine,” Chance said at last. “I was in favor of telling you this from the beginning, but Matthew thought it would inhibit your recovery.” Harry hissed at her attempt to buy her way free from blame, but listened. “Most Parselmouths whose gifts appeared suddenly like this were Light wizards. And none of them recovered.”  
  
“With the concentration method, you mean?” Harry asked.  
  
“With any method,” Chance said, and now her voice went rushing and doubling ahead like a stream flowing down a mountain, as though she had decided to cast aside all the blocks in her way. “We cursed them into Squibs, and the gift stayed, like their ability to move did. We took away their sight and their speech, and they could still hear.” She paused, and Harry listened to her breathing move her chest. “A few of them were put in the Janus Thickey ward. Most of them committed suicide.”  
  
Harry shut his eyes. He could think about giving up his magic so that he would never hurt anyone again. The memory of Kipling’s screams when the snakes coiled back on him still remained in his ears.  
  
But he didn’t want to die. He _didn’t_. He didn’t want to live this way, of course, but he had hoped there was an end to it. And it sounded like there never would be. He could give up his ability to see or speak back to the snakes, and he would still hear them whispering in the night. He could give up his magic, but apparently repressed Parseltongue was something deeper than that, something like the accidental magic that he had sometimes read happened even to save a Squib’s life.  
  
He was caged. Confined. Death or the Dark Arts.  
  
He turned his head and said, “Go away.”  
  
“I should not have told you that,” Chance murmured. “It is true that no other Light wizard with Parseltongue has ever recovered, but _still._ You could be the first, as powerful as you are and as determined as you are. You have overcome worse odds than this, Mr. Potter. If you would do me the courtesy of telling me—”  
  
Harry was breathing fast. He could feel the death sentence sitting on his shoulders, and he knew it would strike him harder when he took the time to really _think_ about it. He knew he would do something worse than he had done so far if she stayed in the room.  
  
He snapped his fingers and opened his eyes to focus on the kraits nearest him. “ _Drive her out,”_ he said in Parseltongue. “ _Don’t bite her._ ”  
  
The snakes boiled off his pillow, yellow and black bands flashing as they surrounded Healer Chance, their tails whipping in multiple directions and their heads coiling around her legs, pushing against her robes. And Harry could _see_ again, the partial hallucinations flowing away, and Chance was definitely human and not snake as she struggled to her feet, clutching her quill, her mouth stuck in a scream.  
  
 _Acceptance, mastery, of the gift, brings relief,_ said Malfoy’s voice.  
  
Harry let himself slump back and watch the kraits bear Chance towards the door on a sea of their writhing bodies, holding back their fangs not because it was their natural instinct but because he had asked them to. He had no idea what Chance saw or felt, didn’t see or didn’t feel, but she went, and there were silent tears slipping down her face.  
  
That sight touched something somewhere near the bottom of his soul, something that sang in hard, dark tones.  
  
 _They can go away. They can leave me alone._  
  
The kraits flowed back to him when they were done with their herding task, and draped him in a happily wriggling pile of bodies. Harry closed his eyes and told himself that they weren’t real, that nothing here was.  
  
But that meant that the “care” the Healers were offering him was the same way.  
  
He slept with a krait tucked into either armpit, thinking about that.  
  
*  
  
Millicent paused when Draco’s face formed out of the fire on her hearth, and then shook her head. “Whatever you want me to help you with, I’m not doing it,” she said.  
  
Draco fluttered his eyelashes. “But what about the time that I got you that Firewhisky when you’d just broken up with Theo and didn’t want anyone to know about it?” he asked. “That’s a debt I haven’t called on yet.”  
  
Millicent sighed and sat back, running a hand through her thick hair. She kept it to such a length that it seemed it should get in her way, but it didn’t, and it never grew an inch longer, either. Draco thought she used spells on it that terrified it into obedience. “So it is,” she said. “But from what Pansy says, what you’re after is Potter, and he’s under wards that I couldn’t get near even if I _was_ a full Healer instead of an apprentice.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “I’m asking you to create a distraction, not let me into Potter’s room. I can manage that by myself.”  
  
Millicent cocked her head to the side and studied him. “You can?”  
  
Draco smiled serenely back. It wasn’t for Millicent to know, any more than it was for Healer Chance, that Draco had made a copy of the key to the wards on Potter’s room the last time he was in hospital. And he had something on him that would take care of any surprises, too. What he really needed was a way to make sure that Weasley’s spies wouldn’t be watching him.   
  
“Fine, don’t tell me,” Millicent said, and shook her head. “There’s a woman I’m tending right now who has a bit of a prejudice against Slytherins and makes a _lot_ of noise if she doesn’t get one of her potions on time. Nasty bitch. That potion mixed with a little concoction I know about is going to make her a perfect distraction.”  
  
Draco traded another smile with her. As someone studying to be a Healer, Millicent was technically supposed to be more compassionate than Draco would ever try to be, but she saw no reason to be polite to people who hated her and wouldn’t trust her anyway. She had tested several of Draco’s potions that needed a living subject on such unpleasant patients. None of them had ever died.  
  
“I want to see him tomorrow morning,” Draco said. “Can you make it happen around ten in the morning?”  
  
Millicent half-closed her eyes. “Closer to ten thirty,” she murmured. “Ms. Bitch gets her dose at nine, and it’ll need that long to build up sufficiently.”  
  
Draco laughed. “Excellent. I trust that she’ll take a lesson from it.”  
  
Millicent nodded and stood up. “Hopefully enough to insist on being treated at home for the duration. And I do expect a bit of payment for this later, Draco. Enough to know what you want with Potter and how he’s reacting to it.” She shut down the Floo connection as she always did, without giving Draco time to say goodbye or doing it herself.  
  
Draco leaned back, tapped a finger against his teeth, and smiled. He had wanted Potter to have a day to himself to contemplate what Draco was offering, but he thought it a good idea not to wait too long. After Weasley’s words, Potter’s friends would probably drop a hint in the Healers’ ears, too, and attempt to have Draco blocked by the ones who didn’t owe anything to him the way Chance did.  
  
 _I think I need only one more visit. Potter must be thinking about it himself._  
  
*  
  
Harry opened his eyes in the dark, under stars.  
  
He didn’t recognize where he stood, except that it wasn’t in hospital, and for the moment, that was enough for him. He turned around with soft earth and grass crumbling under his feet, and studied the trees that whispered above him. The light from the stars and a rising full moon was too faint for him to make out what kind they were. Long, slender, flexible. He reached out and ran his fingers down the nearest leaf, and it felt more like a tentacle or a vine.  
  
 _This is the first step._  
  
The soft voice spoke from every direction. Harry turned around, and felt a heavy, shifting weight on his feet. Snakes. He didn’t look down at them, just enjoyed being able to peer ahead and see something _besides_ them.  
  
There was a path there, a thick, dark slash in the black earth. Harry blinked and tried to see whether it was paved. A Muggle road? He didn’t think so. Instead, it looked as though someone had simply trampled the earth flat with a huge, irresistible tread. Smooth, polished, but, when he reached down and felt it with one hand, softer than stone.  
  
He turned his head and found another path of the same kind, stretching away next to the first one like different spokes radiating from a wheel. And there was another one beyond that, and a fourth when Harry began to walk in a circle, looking for them. He stood on the top of a hill, apparently, covered with trees and then dropping away to earth where the paths were. Altogether, he counted thirteen.  
  
 _Of course there are._ Harry came back to what had to be the first path by his own footprints in the dirt and stared at it for a long time.  
  
Malfoy had said that Dark wizards were the ones who kept to the paths and the insane wizards were the ones who strayed off them. Harry hadn’t expected the paths metaphor to be that literal.  
  
 _Or you could be mad and dreaming._  
  
But the quiet wind hadn’t altered, and neither had the leaves that still sometimes dipped in the breeze and brushed his shoulders, and Harry didn’t think his bloody mind was capable of creating something this real, when so often since this all began it had created something hard to believe instead. He watched the smooth, tempting, above all _downwards_ paths and wondered.  
  
Did he dare take his first step without someone to guide him? Malfoy might. Or he could have been lying when he said that, just trying to get back at Harry. Or he might show him the wrong one.  
  
Harry felt the snakes tugging at his ankles. He looked down, and the long, slender white thread of one that lived underground, far from the sunlight, lifted its head and hissed at him. _Brother. Come, brother._  
  
“Which one do you think I should take?” Harry asked.  
  
The snake slid away down the first path he had noticed, the one right in front of him. And in truth, Harry thought, the one he had appeared facing was as good as any other.  
  
He sighed out, counted to three under his breath, and took the first step.


	5. First Bite

  
Draco stepped out of the fireplace in Chance’s office and paused to listen to the distant shouts. Yes, Millicent had given him his distraction. A patient throwing up random fireballs every time she vomited would give the Healers an appropriately exciting time. And because it came from a potion rather than a spell, they were going to have difficulty stopping it. Even Vanishing the potion from her stomach wouldn’t work; they would have to know what particular mixture had produced the fireballs before they could do that.  
  
Before he opened the door of Chance’s office and stepped out into the corridor, Draco carefully Disillusioned himself. He ought to pass unnoticed as long as he was silent and swift.  
  
He did have to wait while a few apprentice Healers plunged past him in the direction of the excitement, but Millicent had only promised him _mostly_ empty corridors, not _completely_ empty ones. Draco was more than willing to take what he could get.  
  
He ended up in front of Potter’s door faster than he had thought he would, and spent a few minutes listening and looking for signs of spies before he slid the key into the wards. The wards spat at him, then listened to the key and faded from existence with a resigned little sigh. Draco smiled slightly and laid his hand on the door.  
  
Immediately, without the muffling presence of the wards, he could sense the difference in the magic in the room. He cursed and tore the door open.  
  
Potter, enveloped in a misty cloud that Draco could almost arrange into serpentine shapes with his eyes, lay on the bed. His head was turned to the side, his mouth distended, his face waxy. Draco bent down, and cursed again when he realized that long, slender viper fangs had replaced Potter’s front teeth. He was far gone enough that he was probably walking the Dark paths without anyone to guide him.  
  
Draco knew how to join Potter and offer his help. The spell was risky, but what Dark Arts spell wasn’t?  
  
He swiftly cast the spell that relocked the door and then reached down and plunged his hands into the colored clouds of power shifting around Potter. He felt the slight prickle of teeth against his skin, the cool brush of scales, but the next moment, the magic had relaxed and accepted him. Draco smiled grimly. That might mean he had a chance of catching up with Potter before he did himself irreparable damage.  
  
Even as he closed his eyes and began chanting the spell that would connect his magic with Potter’s, he felt distant wonder fill him. Most Dark wizards had to meditate until the image of the paths presented itself to them. Very few had the strength, or the nature, to simply be pulled there, like calling to like.  
  
And the wonder changed and became cooler and stronger, sustaining him like water as he dropped under the surface and into Potter’s mind.  
  
If Potter was that strong, he and Draco would have _so much fun_ together.  
  
*  
  
Harry had been walking the dark path for something that felt like an hour. The hill and the flexible trees on it had long since vanished behind him. He could barely see if he looked straight ahead; faint starlight was the strongest guide here. He was growing bored, although the snakes inching along beside him kept their heads aimed implacably straight ahead.  
  
Of course, Harry wouldn’t be bored if he looked at what awaited him to the _sides_ of the path. But the memory of Malfoy’s caution kept his gaze fixed, and what he saw was only out of the corners of his eyes.  
  
He made out a woman who was a snake from the waist down, but rounded and curved in intriguing ways from the waist up. She beckoned to him with one red nail, and then smiled lazily, as if she was listening to the thought in his head: _How would you even have sex with someone like that?_ Her smile invited him to come and find out.  
  
He saw an up-and-down motion that looked like swings, and laughing winged children flitting around them, pushing others too young to fly back and forth. Their laughter pierced Harry the way nothing had since the days when Dudley’s friends were joking about him in primary school. He wanted to stop and slow down, to ask what game they were playing, to step off the path and see if he could grow wings, too.  
  
 _Stay on the path._  
  
Malfoy’s voice, not in Parseltongue. But Harry was beginning to wonder exactly what _would_ happen if he stepped off the path. Would something eat him? Would he go insane, the way that Malfoy said some Dark wizards like Voldemort had?  
  
 _But you don’t want to go mad. You want to live, the way that Chance said so few Parselmouths did._  
  
So he kept his eyes forwards even when he thought he saw something harmless from the corner of them, like a field of swaying wildflowers, and moved further and further into the starlit darkness.  
  
The path finally finished sloping downwards, and Harry found himself walking on level ground, a cool breeze in his lungs, the edges of the path breaking away into small but solid clumps of dirt. He hesitated and finally stood still, tilting his head back to watch the motionless stars. No moon. The breeze drifted across his forehead and dried the sweat forming on it.  
  
If the path was breaking up into these clumps, then how was he going to know when he strayed off it?  
  
“You shouldn’t have come here alone.”  
  
Harry jerked, and felt the snakes by his feet rise up in hissing clumps of defense. But the next moment, he relaxed when he saw Malfoy’s shape standing on the path, or at least in a portion of it that still looked stamped-down. None of the other things he had seen so far could come onto the path. If Malfoy was here, he was probably legitimate.  
  
“Why not?” Harry asked. “It’s not like I wanted to. I opened my eyes, and I was standing on a hill with trees on it and thirteen paths leading away. I only chose this one because the snakes thought I should.” The white one by his feet who had guided him hissed languidly at the acknowledgment, and twined around his ankle.  
  
Malfoy paused, and the inquiring expression Harry had seen there the first day he visited came back. “Well. I hadn’t thought of that. Most Dark wizards need guides, they can’t do it by themselves, but perhaps a Parselmouth’s snakes could lead him.” He hummed beneath his breath, looking remarkably like Hermione when she was starting a new project. “I haven’t had a Parselmouth to speak to and ask about it before.”  
  
“Why are you here?” Harry asked. “How did you get here?” The world around them was quieter than before, the breeze dying. Harry could still hear laughter from off the path, but fainter than it had been.  
  
“I cast a spell that connected our minds,” Malfoy said simply. “And our magic. Whatever you were suffering at the moment, I would have shared it. Gone into your dream if you were dreaming, for example.” He looked around at the still, dark world. “And this isn’t really so far from a dream.”  
  
“That was risky,” Harry said, wincing as he thought of some of his nightmares that Malfoy could have appeared in.  
  
Malfoy gave him a shining smile with black light behind the teeth. “Of course it was.”  
  
Harry remembered what he had said about Dark wizards, and the consequences of their spells, and smiled in spite of himself. “Well, at least no one can say that you don’t live by what you say.”  
  
Malfoy inclined his head, his dark smile gone. “And what about you, Harry Potter?” he asked softly, his words quiet enough that Harry shifted a step towards him to hear better. “What are your convictions, now that you’re walking this path? You remembered my advice. You took it. Can you say that you still want to be a Light wizard, enough to reject the Dark Arts?”  
  
Harry let out a long breath, and decided that looking away from Malfoy right now would be a bad idea, and not just because he might catch a glimpse of what was waiting for him off the paths. “I think,” he said, “that I can’t, not if I want to live. Healer Chance told me that all the Light wizards who suddenly had Parseltongue show up in their lives died or went insane. They didn’t manage to concentrate it away, and even making them Squibs didn’t help.”  
  
“Ah,” Malfoy said, such a soft breath of sound that Harry found himself wincing a little. He could _wish_ Malfoy sounded less covetous. Malfoy met his gaze and smiled a little, but if he heard Harry’s thought, it seemed like he had no intention of obeying it. “You’ve come this far on your own, Potter, and never strayed from the path despite temptations. That’s really rather impressive. I can guide you on the next few steps. Will you?” He held out his hand.  
  
Harry still hesitated. He half-thought that what Malfoy wanted from him _had_ to be more than mere commitment to the Dark Arts, and perhaps he should continue to explore the paths by himself with his snakes. That would keep him from owing a debt to Malfoy, at least.  
  
But it wouldn’t get him out of hospital. He suspected Malfoy had a plan as far as that went, since he had managed to show up for unsupervised visits to Harry’s hospital room several times now.  
  
“I want to know what you want,” he said.  
  
“To see the Dark Arts revived,” Malfoy said, his eyes shining. Harry considered him warily, but he didn’t _think_ it was the same kind of fanatical passion that he’d seen in the Death Eaters arrested since the end of the war. “To have someone by my side who is powerful enough to make that happen. The chance to study Parseltongue, which I’ll expect you to grant me in return for rescuing you.”  
  
“You get me free from here,” Harry said. “And I go—where? You have to realize that Ron can track you down.”  
  
“There are ways of vanishing that I wouldn’t use myself unless I had a greater prize to conceal than my mere presence in St. Mungo’s,” Malfoy whispered. “As it happens, Weasley is already aware of, and unhappy about, my visits to you. But we can disappear in other ways. Would you like to come with me and learn what they are?” His hand stayed extended and steady, despite the length of time he’d held it out.  
  
Harry swallowed. He still felt wary just because Malfoy was Malfoy, and he didn’t know if even a bargain that would enable him to survive and Malfoy to study him would be enough to overcome their hatred.  
  
But who else was here? And the white snake eddying around him, and the less distinct others, hadn’t reacted to Malfoy with the same level of hostility that they used to the Healers, and even to Ron. Harry had already seen that the snakes gave him some level of perception that he didn’t ordinarily have; they’d told him Chance was lying, for example.  
  
Perhaps it was all right to trust Malfoy, so far if no farther.  
  
“Yes,” he whispered, trying not to think about what he was doing in too much detail lest it throw him back into madness, and took Malfoy’s hand.  
  
*  
  
Draco might have cheered in other circumstances, but the touch of Potter’s hand filled him with a satisfaction too deep and shining for that; it would have been like cheering at the Midsummer sunrise. He bowed to him instead, and then looked down at the clouds of power around Potter’s feet. This time, he thought he could make out the slender shape of a white snake for more than a few seconds before his eyes watered and he had to look away.  
  
“You’ve done well so far,” he said. “But these paths don’t end, and you can’t learn from them if you simply walk them and do nothing else. I’m going to show you what lies at the end of this one, and then you can decide whether you want to walk more of it right now or return to your hospital room.”  
  
Potter’s face twisted a bit. “Shouldn’t we go back anyway? Since someone is probably going to be checking on me soon, and they’ll find you there if we don’t hurry?”  
  
“Time doesn’t pass exactly here as it does elsewhere,” Draco said, softening his voice and soothing Potter all the more. He had to ensure that Potter was calm, or it was quite possible that they would both end up stuck somewhere on the path, and Draco didn’t look forward to the tangles that they would have to negotiate then. “You have to make the decision, though. Dark Arts is all about making your own decisions, taking your own risks.”  
  
Potter’s eyes half-shut. Then he nodded and said, “Show me.”  
  
Draco closed his eyes. The paths burned into his own mind shone bright for a moment, and he reached out and touched the memories that walked them: memories of challenges met, opponents defeated, risky spells mattered. The most frightening thing that any practitioner of the Dark Arts would face was himself.   
  
The dark world around them seemed to whir and turn as if he and Potter could feel the motion of the planet through space. Then it settled down. Draco turned his head and opened his eyes.  
  
They were standing in the middle of a wide clearing of light grey dust, the end of the path that Potter had been walking. Other paths ran out from the clearing, but the tree in the center of it occupied Potter’s attention, and Draco couldn’t blame him. Even though he had seen this sight before, it was hard to look away.  
  
The tree was high enough to make people looking at it feel dizzy, and its bark was the kind of velvety black that usually seemed to loom overhead between stars. The branches humped and crooked like reaching arms, or so Draco had thought until he realized that reaching arms would probably have more of a goal and sanity to them. Here and there from one of them dangled a shining silvery rope, the color of the dirt scattered in the clearing at the tree’s feet. The ropes almost shone, reflecting back the starlight better than most other things did here. But Draco knew—and from his tensing, perhaps Potter did as well—that the brightest things in the world of the Dark Arts were often the most dangerous.  
  
At the end of each rope hung a broken body. Tongues dangled from between their lips, longer than normal, as long as the corpse in some cases, and swollen black-blue, like the faces. Legs still kicked weakly. When a breeze passed and the bodies swayed in it, Draco could hear the crisp sound of snapping necks.  
  
“What is this tree?” Potter whispered.  
  
“It’s one of the places that people end up when they try to take a risk and then draw back at the last moment,” Draco said gently. “I know that you said you were committed to learning the Dark Arts, but it’s not a safe thing to do if you don’t mean it. Give your whole heart, or give nothing at all.”  
  
“Literally,” Potter said, and Draco knew he was staring at the single long branch near the back of the tree that spitted a giant heart. Draco had never known whose it was, only that it beat sluggishly now and then and sent gouts of blood down the bark. When it started to dry out, it would vanish and a new one would replace it. Or perhaps the old one, swollen and plumped for the sin of cowardice all over again, would reappear.  
  
“Yes,” Draco said, and drew near him, so that he could feel the way Potter breathed, the way he shifted and swallowed. He reached out and glanced one hand down Potter’s; it felt colder than it had when Draco brought them here. “This is the kind of price that can be paid.”  
  
Potter stared down the grey dirt beneath their feet, and muttered something. Draco bent courteously closer. After a moment, Potter raised his voice and repeated it. “It’s never going to be completely normal, is it? My life. I can get rid of seeing only snakes all the time, but that means I’ll have to listen to them and walk in places like this.”  
  
Draco chuckled in spite of himself, and Potter glared at him. Draco met his eyes. “Do you think you would be _content_ with a normal life?” he asked. “You decided to go after Dark wizards, a high-profile career and one that you can’t say everyone chooses. I’ve heard about wild chases and spells invented in the heat of the moment.”  
  
“I _chose_ that one,” Potter said, splotches of ugly color coming into his cheeks. “I didn’t choose to have the Parseltongue wake up and take over my life.”  
  
Draco nodded. “I know. But what you have now is only two options: either the Parseltongue drags you along by the nose for the rest of your life, or you make the commitment that you’ve already said you did and live with it, live _through_ it.”  
  
*  
  
Harry closed his eyes. Put like that, the choice was no choice at all.  
  
And he hated that, but he had been raging about it since Ron brought him to hospital. And Malfoy, as far as he could tell, had been absolutely honest and absolutely accurate, which was more than any Healer had done.  
  
 _He just wants me to join him._  
  
But even that was something. He wanted Harry for his strength, and to play on those strengths, instead of treating him as small and harmless in the way that the Healers wanted to.  
  
“All right,” Harry said, and opened his eyes. “I want to go back to hospital right now.” He forced himself to look at the giant, spitted heart, the hanging bodies, and told himself that objectively, they were no worse than some of the ways that victims’ bodies had ended up looking when he chased Dark wizards as an Auror. “I’ll think more about walking the paths later.”  
  
Malfoy smiled at him, and Harry tried not to preen at the approval in his eyes and tried not to wince at his own need for approval. Malfoy was going to be his companion on these paths and in his new life for a long time, it seemed. Maybe it was only natural that Harry wanted to trust him.  
  
 _You can trust him, brother,_ said the white snake by Harry’s feet, which had now entwined itself around his left leg so Harry thought he would have difficulty walking. _I promise that you can. I would bite him if you could not._  
  
 _What would your bite do?_ Harry hissed back as the darkness around them dissolved and he opened his eyes to an expanse of white. After a moment, he recognized it as his pillow and sat up, shaking his head.  
  
 _Lock his muscles down so that they crushed his inner organs,_ said the snake, dancing across the pillow in loops of scribbles that reminded Harry of Snape’s remarks on his Potions essays.  
  
Harry shuddered a little and turned. Sure enough, Malfoy sat on the bed beside him. He was just opening his eyes, a faraway look in them, as though it had been harder for him to journey back than it was for Harry. If he was familiar with those paths, maybe it was, Harry thought.  
  
Malfoy saw him watching and smiled, brushing his pale hair back from his face. “ _Tempus,_ ” he murmured, and Harry saw the numbers 10:50 appear in front of Malfoy. Malfoy nodded. “I’ve only been here ten minutes. But now that you’ve made your decision, I think we should make our escape as soon as possible.”  
  
Harry shivered. He was braver about speaking words of commitment on the Dark paths, in another world, than he was about speaking them in the real world where they would separate him from his friends forever.  
  
But when he looked at the floor, he could see the kraits going cloudy and muddy again, and when he looked up, Malfoy’s eyes were without lashes or lids. Harry swallowed and said, “I’ve committed. I’ve decided.”  
  
Malfoy gave him another of those approving smiles that Harry hoped he didn’t get addicted to, and then turned his head and froze. When he reached towards Harry, his hand was cold. “Were you expecting any visitor this morning?”  
  
Harry frowned. “No. But someone could have arranged to visit without telling me. The Healers don’t tell me when one of _them_ is going to show up, let alone my friends.” He thought about the extreme bitterness in his voice, and winced, but then decided that it probably wasn’t going to displease Malfoy, who hated his friends.  
  
“Someone is out there now,” Malfoy breathed. His fingers touched the air for a moment as though he was playing an invisible harp; then he leaped off the bed and moved towards the door in a stalking crouch. Harry didn’t see his wand in his hand, but he knew that Malfoy didn’t need a wand to be dangerous.  
  
Harry leaped off the bed behind him and almost tripped over one of the kraits, which hissed and climbed his leg to his hip so he didn’t do it again. “Don’t hurt them,” he told Malfoy.  
  
“Weasley and Granger, you mean?” Malfoy’s fingers had begun to move faster; apparently the invisible harp was vibrating in a way that meant he had to struggle to play it. “I don’t want to.”  
  
Harry heard the silent threat in his words: _That doesn’t mean I won’t._  
  
Harry took a breath in, and released it as the words, “Then let me go in front of you and herd them. I could do it this morning. I would—I would rather be the one who confronted them.”  
  
Malfoy considered him in silence. Harry waited with his heart pounding crazily, half-expecting someone to burst through the door at any moment, and more than half hoping that they wouldn’t.  
  
*  
  
 _Well. I_ am _impressed._  
  
Potter had made more strides than Draco had thought possible for a week. He had faced the Hanging Tree, made his decision about embracing the Dark Arts, and taken Draco’s hand. And although he might only want to do it to spare his friends the kind of injury he thought Draco would do them, now he was offering to use his snakes as a weapon against people who would interfere.  
  
Those were more significant things than Draco had thought he would achieve, more significant than he would have asked for. He wondered idly for a moment whether Potter thought them significant, and then gave up the notion of asking. Instead, he nodded and stepped back, catching a brief glimpse of a golden mist moving in front of Potter. That was probably the vipers, or whatever other kinds of snakes attended him, that he was commanding at the moment.  
  
“All right. Do whatever you want to, only remove them from our line of flight,” he said, and then leaned back against the bed and prepared to watch. Just because Potter had impressed him so far didn’t mean that Draco was content to let him rest on his laurels.  
  
Potter glanced back at him once and smiled nervously through teeth that were no longer fangs but still thinner and sharper than normal. Then he lifted his hands, and boiling Parseltongue escaped his lips. The golden mist flowed up to the door and bent sideways, in a key-like pattern, severing the wards that had reengaged behind Draco.  
  
The door opened.


	6. Exit, Pursued By a Snake

  
It was Hermione who stood there.  
  
Harry was seeing her properly for the first time in weeks, without snakes crawling over her head and around her feet, and he wanted to reach out and embrace her just for that. But she had her wand aimed at the door, and even if, by her expression, she had expected to see something more threatening than he was, that still meant Harry had to deal with her wand. He stepped back and said softly, “Hermione?”  
  
“Harry?” Her eyes skimmed over him, and then locked on his face and froze. Harry reckoned he still had a single slit pupil. She gulped and swallowed, and reached out to him with vivid tears trembling in her eyes. “Have you—did they cure you? Are you back to normal now?”  
  
Red vapor had begun to swirl around Hermione’s legs, and out of it formed coral snakes, and snakes Harry didn’t recognize but knew were vipers. They arched their necks suggestively over Hermione’s legs, and told Harry in hissing whispers of all the many ways she could die from their venom.  
  
“ _Hold back_ ,” Harry hissed to them. “ _I don’t want you to hurt anyone unless I tell you to!”_  
  
There was a long moment when the vapor swirled and pulled against his control, and Harry knew that they were on the verge of attacking. This was his first real test of mastery over his Parseltongue gift, and if he failed, he reckoned he could end up on that Hanging Tree that Malfoy had shown him, or worse.  
  
But he was stronger than they were, and his desire to see Hermione unharmed was ultimately stronger than their wish to bite her. They looped and flowed and hissed, and Harry hissed back, and then they settled down and came back to him. Harry knelt down so that they could dance up his arms and flick their forked tongues against his cheeks. It felt better than he had known it could, but also ticklish, so that he laughed.  
  
He looked up when he heard a small sound. Hermione wasn’t laughing. She stood there with her eyes fixed on him and a bright, sick expression painting her face.  
  
Harry stood up and shook his head, trying to avoid looking at the snakes even from the corners of his eyes, so he would speak in English. “I’m not cured, Hermione. I just decided that I could accept this, and that was better than dying or spending the rest of my life mad.”  
  
“But you can’t control them,” Hermione said, in the fragile voice of someone who had spent a lot of time thinking about it, and reluctantly settled on this as the only possible conclusion. “I wish it was different, too, Harry, but you already nearly killed someone. Do you think you can avoid doing it again?”  
  
“I think I can control them,” Harry said, and hated himself for the way his voice faltered. “There’s someone here who’s given me the faith that I can control them, who’s told me that I can—”  
  
Hermione pointed her wand, and Harry’s tongue dried. He felt Malfoy shifting behind him, and then felt the heavy hand drop onto his shoulder. It felt comforting and chaining at the same time, as though Malfoy were going to save Harry by locking him up. Then he shoved past Harry. Harry could see only the back of his head as he spoke to Hermione, but hearing his voice was enough.  
  
“You can step out of our paths and leave well enough alone, Granger, if you please. Potter has finally learned that he has the right to live his own life. If you don’t want to stand in the way of that, then move, now.”  
  
“I know that he hasn’t found _anything_ ,” Hermione said, and her voice had changed into the stony, cold tone Harry had so often heard aimed at owners of house-elves who insisted on abusing them. “I know that he hasn’t learned anything but the lies you told him, and if he was well, he would never have fallen for them. _You_ should be the one to stand aside, Malfoy. The Healers are already on their way.”  
  
Harry shut his eyes. Put that way, it made him wonder, _What the hell am I doing? Why am I listening to Malfoy instead of the Healers, instead of my friends?_  
  
But his friends hadn’t been there in the last few days to tell him anything. Malfoy had offered him a way to see the world coherently again, and Harry _thought_ he could get away without hurting anyone. He was pretty sure, at least. He reached out and told the vipers in a stream of subvocal Parseltongue, _Bind Hermione. Don’t bite her. Don’t you ever bite her. But hold her back, and take her wand._  
  
He wanted to see if it could happen, if he could do something with the snakes that didn’t hurt anyone. He had done it with Healer Chance earlier, but Hermione hadn’t been there to witness that. Harry was hoping that, if she _could_ see a demonstration, she might change her mind and accept that Harry had only been taking Malfoy’s advice.  
  
He could hope.  
  
*  
  
Draco could feel the magic in the air around him change as Granger aimed her wand and Potter spoke softly in Parseltongue. Draco couldn’t _hear_ him, but he didn’t need to when he could feel that shift, the moment when the snakes he couldn’t see changed their focus and Potter employed his Dark gift in the real world.  
  
After that, the only thing he had to do was get out of the way.  
  
The floor around him changed the way it would if shadows were skimming across it, and then snakes were all around Granger, rearing up and around her arms and baring their fangs in her face and hissing, almost delicately, to drive her back. She screamed and lashed out, but in seconds they’d bound her arms to her sides, and curled around her legs, and coiled on her shoulders, and drowned her hair in a mass of bright writhing bodies. Draco watched them as they settled, and his throat ached and his tongue felt too large. He reached back and took Potter’s hand in his own, and Potter squeezed once before he stepped past Draco and faced his friend.  
  
“They’re not going to hurt you,” he said, although the snakes were wrapped so thickly around her ears that Draco didn’t know if she’d heard him. He almost hoped not. That would make it more frightening for her, and perhaps she would come to see what sort of wizard she’d tried to lock up. “Hermione, I know it’s hard, but—trust me? Please? Can you? They’ll just keep you here until we can get away.” His voice sank into pleading, and a few of the serpents began to unwind.  
  
Draco pinched Potter’s arm, and Potter whirled roughly towards him. In moments, his arms spouted triangular heads and reaching jaws, and Draco knew that he might have died if he had smelled enough like fear.  
  
As it was, he was perfectly content to meet Potter’s eyes, and smile a little, and speak gently. “You need to remember that we’re leaving. Trust your snakes to hold her. You can speak to her and persuade her of the legitimacy of your point-of-view when you’re somewhere where you can write letters. Are you in that place right now?”  
  
Potter’s nostrils flared with irritation, but he took a deep breath and shook his head. “Sometimes you’re a right bastard, Malfoy,” he muttered, moving past him and into the corridor. Draco took one more glance at Granger, bound and stifled, both for pleasure and because it might enable him to understand the Parseltongue better later, and then followed.  
  
“The right bastard who’s getting you out of here, remember,” he said.  
  
Potter nodded in concession to that, and then spun to face the corridor that led to the right. Draco listened, and smiled when he heard running footsteps. “The snakes make your senses sharper?” he asked.  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Potter said. “Snakes don’t have ears. No, they felt the vibrations.” He took a step in that direction, and then stopped. “I don’t want too many confrontations with other people,” Draco heard him whisper to himself. “But they still have my wand, and I _need_ to get that back.”  
  
“Of course you do,” Draco said. “Why not Summon it?”  
  
“You don’t think they’ll have it locked up?” Potter stared at him. “And I can’t do magic powerful enough to Summon a chained wand without the wand, anyway.”  
  
Draco turned his hawthorn wand around and proffered it smoothly, handle towards Potter. He could feel the rising excitement of his own heartbeat, louder now in his ears than the footsteps of their enemies, and there were many people—Pansy included—who would have told him it was stupid to make a ceremony out of this when they had Healers waiting to fight them. But he did it anyway, and his reward was in the way Potter’s eyes widened and his fingers twitched as if he would reach out and take the wand before he thought about it.  
  
“But that leaves you defenseless,” Potter said, looking at him, and Draco knew from the focus of his eyes that _he_ had forgotten about the running Healers, too. That was another source of pleasure.  
  
“Not defenseless,” Draco said, and touched the pocket that hung low with the weight of a silver ball. “That’s a word that you need to stop thinking about when it applies to Dark wizards.”  
  
A second longer, and then Potter nodded shortly once, said, “I won’t forget this, Malfoy,” snatched the hawthorn wand, and spun around to send his “ _Accio_ Harry Potter’s wand!” ringing through hospital.   
  
The first of the Healers came around the corner, and there was pallor in his face, and he didn’t seem to intend to let Potter’s hero status stop him from raising his wand. Draco could feel his own muscles flowing and tensing into new shapes, waiting for a serious challenge from someone opposite him—although it probably wouldn’t come, considering how much offensive magic both he and Potter knew.  
  
 _Now it begins._  
  
*  
  
Harry could feel his wand coming closer and closer, and didn’t know if he was perceiving that via his own senses or those of his snakes. Perhaps both. They did seem to have made him more sensitive to magic.  
  
And now that he had accepted them, they coiled around him in lazy, docile waves that reminded him of the way his magic often felt, obedient, wanting only to be used.  
  
Harry shook his head and then saw his wand zip around the corner. He tossed the hawthorn one into the air, confident that Malfoy would catch it more easily than he had tossed it, and took the familiar holly wood in hand. He almost expected it to burst into flames, the phoenix feather inside rejecting him because he had become Dark.  
  
But that was stupid, wasn’t it? Dumbledore’s phoenix had shed the feather that was in Tom Riddle’s wand, and it hadn’t rejected _him_.  
  
He wondered how irritated Malfoy would be at Harry comparing himself to Voldemort, and then resolved that he should do it as often as possible, just so that Malfoy didn’t get too comfortable with thinking that Harry wasn’t considering the possible consequences of his decision. Harry turned to face the Healers and raised a Shield Charm. The air rang in front of him and became silver and hard just in time to deflect the first curse.  
  
A _curse_ , Harry thought, and his bones tingled. He had thought the Healers would go for defensive magic at first, the kind they were trained in, to restrain and bind the people attacking them instead of hurting them. But no, evidently they considered him dangerous enough that curses it was.  
  
Perhaps they thought that it was best to just kill Parselmouths like him on sight.  
  
And then he didn’t have time to think about it, because the Healers had stopped and formed a living wall in front of him, arms linked together, and one of them had shut her eyes and was whispering some spell that made her look rapt in a trance. Harry took a step towards her, and her eyes flew open and her wand shot out.  
  
This time, the spell that splashed down outside the Shield Charm landed a few inches from the white serpent dancing in front of Harry, and it froze briefly in shock.  
  
 _They’re trying to see my snakes. They’re trying to kill my snakes._  
  
The rage that shot through Harry was enough to make him snarl. Immediately, the air in front of him turned misty as he thought about what they needed, him and Malfoy and his snakes, and then there was the _plop_ of smooth bodies hitting the ground and the serpents edged forwards. New snakes, ones Harry didn’t recognize, but with swirling red and blue bands on their bodies, and vibrating black tails.  
  
“ _Bite them,”_ Harry hissed. “ _I know you can make them go to sleep instead of killing them. But bite them._ Stop _them_.”  
  
There was a long moment when the serpents seemed to wind their necks over each other and consider his request, and then they went forwards in a shallow rush. One for each Healer, Harry thought, and he wasn’t conscious of having counted the Healers and come up with that perfect number, either. That was his gift at work, probably.  
  
Fangs locked home, and either the Healers had cast a spell that meant only one of them could see the snakes or they couldn’t do it again so quickly. They tried to skip sideways, but that only carried them into the mouth of another of Harry’s darlings, and then they slumped, and then their eyes fluttered, and then they dropped into a coma-like sleep. The snakes fanned out ahead of Harry, adroitly avoiding the falling bodies, aiming for more targets.  
  
Slow clapping made Harry wake and turn, and blink. Malfoy stood behind him, applauding slowly, his eyes and his smile so bright that Harry felt himself flush and duck his head, instinctively hiding from attention and praise.  
  
Malfoy’s rapid footsteps came towards him, and then Malfoy seized Harry beneath the chin and tilted his face upwards, as though he had the right to do that. Harry hissed at him, but Malfoy was no snake, to be affected by the Parseltongue, and he did nothing but smile, a little, and shake his head.  
  
“You should never do that,” he said quietly, his gaze focused on Harry’s face. “We don’t know of anyone else in the world who can do what you do. You _deserve_ to bask in the glory that you’ll get for it. And you’ve already proved them wrong, the ones who thought you would go insane because the Dark Lord did. You can use your snakes to harmlessly bind and drive and tranquilize. You don’t kill.” His eyes deepened in a way that made Harry wonder what was going on, because their color didn’t actually change. “But you could.”  
  
“And it makes you hard to think about that, right?” Harry muttered, breaking away from him, speaking randomly and not out of knowledge. He wanted Malfoy to shut up, and he wanted to silence his own disturbing response to the twit. On the other hand, Malfoy was the one who had rescued him, the one without whom he might have died.  
  
He was just opening his mouth to apologize when Malfoy said, “Oh, yes. It does.”  
  
Harry gaped at him. Then he couldn’t help the way that his eyes sneaked downwards, but were defeated by Malfoy’s own thick robes. He blushed more violently than ever and turned to follow his snakes, while Malfoy’s soft laughter arose from behind him.  
  
*  
  
Draco was aware of the approaching threat from behind them before Potter was, because Potter was probably swimming in the Parseltongue and had no sensitivity for anything else right now, and Draco had trained to recognize Light magic along with Dark. He turned and glanced over his shoulder.  
  
And yes. Weasley. No Granger with him, which made Draco glad. Two of them together might have been a match for him, or at least he would have had to work much harder to make sure that he didn’t harm them, as he was sure Potter would prefer.  
  
“Someone coming,” Draco said softly into Potter’s ear. “One of your friends.” Potter’s shoulders tensed and rippled, and Draco shook his head. “I’ll handle him.”  
  
“No killing,” Potter said out of the corner of his mouth. “No crippling.”  
  
“I know that,” Draco said. “I’ll do my best to bind him or make him go to sleep, the way that you did with Granger and the Healers.”  
  
Potter nodded, and then hesitated when he realized that Draco had turned to face the corridor behind them. “But what happens if you fight him and fall behind me?” he asked, rolling his head to look at Draco.  
  
Draco admired them, those shining green eyes with slit pupils in the middle of them, the thin teeth nearly pricking Potter’s bottom lip, the slight swell of his cheeks. Draco wouldn’t have known what that last part meant, if he hadn’t the spent the past few days reading everything about Parselmouths he could get his hands on. Potter had venom sacs of his own now, growing into being. His own bite would be deadly. Draco wondered if he knew that, and if he would welcome the change.  
  
 _In time, I hope he will._  
  
“If something happens to me,” he said, “then tell the snakes to take you to Malfoy Manor. I’ve built a door into the wards for you, and you’re strong, much stronger than I was anticipating. You should be able to get inside. Then contact Pansy Parkinson.”  
  
For a moment, Potter’s mouth worked as though he wanted to ask how he would survive without Draco, what he should do next, how the snakes were supposed to protect him if Draco’s magic failed against Weasley. And then his jaws clamped tightly shut, and he nodded. He turned away from Draco without a backwards glance, running silently into the distance. The Healers sleeping on the floor snored so loudly that the faint hiss Draco thought he heard accompanying Potter faded and vanished.  
  
Draco turned to face Weasley.  
  
He came around the corner in the way that he probably thought a cautious Auror shoulder, his shoulders hunched, his wand darting around in front of him. A chair floating behind him would be used as temporary cover. Draco had seen the same tactics from his smarter enemies, and he applauded politely.  
  
Weasley stopped and looked at him. The stare had nothing of the open disdain Draco had seen during their last confrontation. That told him something about his enemy. Weasley was capable of evaluating other people more carefully than he let on. He would show emotions and let them interfere with his behavior only when there was no disadvantage to doing so.  
  
Draco could respect that. He only wished that he dared let their duel be longer. But other Healers could show up soon, and Granger might even find a way to fight her way out of the snakes binding her.  
  
“Malfoy,” Weasley said, and shifted would-be-casually to the side, his hand on a squirming shape in his pocket. Draco had no idea what it was, but that only increased the sweetness of the battle-hunger flooding him. Years of dedication and study in the Dark Arts had augmented the need to _show_ someone else what he could do. And he was not afraid. “So you managed to free Harry after all. Congratulations, you might have turned a dangerous killer loose on the wizarding world.”  
  
Draco let his breath sigh past parted lips, and wished for a moment that Potter could be here to hear what Weasley thought of him. Then he shook his head. That information would only depress Potter, and they didn’t need that right now. “I wouldn’t have turned loose someone I thought would slaughter me and my friends,” he said.  
  
Weasley sneered. “And people who _don’t_ protect themselves with illegal spells and blood magic?” He turned slightly to the side and twisted his wrist, and his wand sprang into his hand. The squirming of the thing in his pocket grew wilder. From the way he stood, with only his elbow concealing it now, Draco decided that he didn’t know Draco had seen it yet. “What are they supposed to do?”  
  
“Do you know your own friend?” Draco asked in interest, taking a step forwards. “We _are_ talking about the same man, aren’t we? You know, the one who saved the wizarding world and everything surrounding it?”  
  
“Even the best of men can change,” Weasley said, and hit Draco with the most powerful Blasting Curse he’d ever felt while he was still talking.  
  
Draco took a step to the side and spoke, softly, the words of an incantation that he had spent years trying to master. As he spoke it now, he wasn’t entirely sure that it was the best one to use against Weasley.  
  
But he wanted to use it, and that element of risk was what the Dark Arts was all about.  
  
The world blurred and stretched nauseatingly around him, and then he could make out a tableau of Weasleys, all of them locked in different positions. It was the movements that Weasley would make in the next few seconds, slowed down and separated. Draco studied the one at the end, in which he’d taken the squirming thing out of his pocket, and smiled. _Strange that he is so hypocritical about Parseltongue when he’s hunting with one of those spitting cobras the Unspeakables have taken to raising._ The cobras were utterly vicious, lobotomized so that they only obeyed the commands of a particular voice, and capable of spitting a drug that function like a combination of Numbing Potion and Veritaserum.  
  
So that was the weapon. Draco didn’t intend to stand still for it.  
  
He returned to normal time, and the Blasting Curse hit him. Few Dark spells were defensive, Draco thought clinically as the curse spun him sideways and into the wall. One had to use them creatively to achieve the same effect as most of the Light magic that Weasley and his kind learned. For the moment, his head hurt and his ribs ached, and he had sacrificed the dodging advantage he might have gained to learning Weasley’s end game.  
  
But now that he knew what it was, he could deal with it.  
  
His wand hand was unharmed; Draco would have done _something_ about the blast if he had thought it would not be. He lifted it up and aimed it at Weasley, and said, “ _Contra mentem._ ”  
  
The world blurred around him again, and he felt the power heaving in him, shining. Then it flooded out of him so suddenly that Draco vomited. But that was part of the risk, too, and he stood up and turned around knowing it had worked, or Weasley would have already attacked him.  
  
Both Weasley and the cobra lay motionless on the floor; the spell worked against anything with a mind. Draco smiled at them and said in a calm, clear voice, “Weasley, you’re going to find yourself unable to fight me or Potter again. Cobra, you obey me now. Come here.”  
  
The snake slid straight towards him, while Weasley sat up and shook his head back and forth in confusion. Draco scooped the cobra up and admired the shining black pattern on the half-spread hood.  
  
“I can’t wait to show you to Potter,” he told it, and then cast a few healing charms that lessened the pain in his head and ribs before he passed down the corridors after Potter.


	7. Delicate Fangs

  
More Healers were coming towards him. Harry thought he would have known that even without the flowering of vivid sensation inside the bones of his head and ears as their footsteps thumped on the floors and their fists along the walls. He could make out the fear, like a scent and like a sight around him, so that he seemed to see new colors when he turned around.  
  
He smiled. Then he winced and lifted his head. His front teeth still felt like fangs, and his cheeks squished and bent beneath his fingers in new ways. He swallowed, and felt something sharp and metallic in the back of his throat.  
  
 _I have venom._  
  
He didn’t have time to be distressed by it, what with the concern about Malfoy behind him and the Healers that appeared in front of him. He was at the head of a staircase now, and it was all too obvious that the Healers intended to hold him at the top while they brought up more and more reinforcements from below. Even with his wand, Harry didn’t know that he could safely spring and land among them before they cast spells.  
  
But his wand wasn’t the only asset that he had now.  
  
He glanced up, and a snake of his desire appeared in the air above him, a snake such as Harry vaguely remembered reading about somewhere, with flaps of emerald-green skin spreading out from the sides. Those flaps let it glide from tree to tree, like a flying squirrel, or a dragon. This snake was bigger than the ones Harry had read about, of course, because he wanted it to be, and because that was what he needed it to be. He reached up a hand, and it was there, slipping beneath his fingers, smooth scales and flaring skin.  
  
 _Brother. Lord,_ said the snake, and turned its head so that its tongue danced along his fingertips. _Tell me what you want me to do._  
  
 _Carry me over their heads and down into the midst of them,_ Harry said. He had thought about just escaping the Healers altogether, but so far, he didn’t think he had done anything scary enough to keep them from going after him. Instead, he would do something impressive but harmless, and he hoped that would be enough to convince them to back off. _Over their spells. I’ll handle the other defensive parts._  
  
 _Of course, brother._  
  
The flying snake rolled back, rearing in midair, and Harry sprang and locked his hands around the body under the strips of skin. The snake flapped once, and then they were gliding straight down, towards the startled Healers. Beneath Harry came the white snake and the conjured vipers full of sleeping venom and a variety of other dancing snakes that he didn’t recognize. He didn’t know where they had come from, when they had joined him.  
  
As long as they did what he told them to do and no more, then it wouldn’t matter.  
  
A long, sleepy, rattling hiss rose from the snakes beneath him as they followed. _Of course we will only do what you tell us, brother. We wish to obey you in all things._  
  
Harry licked his lips a little as he thought about that, and then he had no more time to think. They were down the stairs, and the flying snake gave a little wriggle of its tapered tail and dropped him straight into the middle of the Healers.  
  
Harry tucked in his legs and arms as he fell, letting his knees bend to take the shock of the landing, remembering his Auror training about falling from a height. Of course, most of the time such a landing wouldn’t have the softness of bodies to cushion it.  
  
He turned and hissed straight into the face of a Healer who was tangled beneath him and had been quicker than most of the others to reach for a wand. The Healer recoiled and lifted a hand in front of him as though that meant he could shield his eyes.  
  
Harry didn’t know whether his venom was a kind he could spit or not. And he didn’t try to find out. He ducked under the Healer’s raised arm and fought his way between them, waiting for the moment when someone would try to grab him.  
  
And of course it happened. There were some people who just couldn’t leave well enough alone, Harry thought. The hand curled around his ankle and held him, even when Harry kicked hard enough to break fingers.  
  
Harry turned and reached down, deep into himself, deep into a part of him that he hadn’t known was there and most likely would never have acknowledged if it wasn’t for Malfoy. He didn’t know exactly what he was doing. He only knew what he wanted done. He extended his fingers, and then spread them apart, and from between them came a rush of magic, grey-green and purple-red, throbbing so brilliantly that it seemed, at least to Harry, as though he cradled a beating heart.  
  
The magic struck the Healer holding him, and there was a complicated moment when wonder burned in Harry; he felt as he had when first walking into the Great Hall at Hogwarts and seeing the enchanted ceiling. Anything might happen, and the world would change from this moment forwards.  
  
The Healer cried out as his arms began to shrink and fade, retracting into his body. Scales rushed across his face, and his mouth and nose turned towards each other. Around his head flapped loose skin that Harry knew could grow into a hood easily. He was destining the Healer to become a cobra.  
  
And finally, _finally_ , the other Healers pulled back with cries of disgust and tumbled into the far corners of the corridor, trembling, flinching from him, leaving him _alone_. Harry hadn’t wanted to frighten them all that much; he had only done it because it meant, absolutely, that his escape was assured.  
  
And they found him disgusting _anyway_. Harry jerked his hands out, along an invisible rope sliding between his fingers, and halted the Healer’s transformation. He turned his head in a slow circle, staring into the rapt eyes of those around him, and they flinched from him and hid their faces.  
  
“He’ll turn back once I’m free of hospital,” Harry said, not caring for the moment if he spoke in English or Parseltongue, and then lunged past the shattered remnants of their circle and began to run. The serpents followed him, flying along the ceiling, climbing the walls, tagging beside his ankles and hissing soft, gentle words about how clever and strong he was.  
  
Harry wondered if that was the _real_ reason that so many Parselmouths had gone insane, because the praise had gone to their heads and they had begun to think that they could really do anything they wanted, with no limitation of power or morality.  
  
If that was the case, it was good that he was partnered with Malfoy, who would deflate his head when it wanted deflating.  
  
*  
  
Draco had to close his eyes when he passed the half-transformed Healer and the signs of battle. The throb in his head and his chest and between his legs was getting harder to ignore.  
  
But he would have to ignore it for the moment. The Dark Arts was about nothing if not discipline.  
  
He opened his eyes and hurtled forwards, faster than he had been before. He was carrying Weasley’s cobra now; superior magical weapon or not, it couldn’t move as fast as he could. He rounded the final corner that, he thought, should carry him into sight of Potter.  
  
And yes, there Potter was, but standing as if hypnotized in front of a long, glittering wall of silver and gold. One of St. Mungo’s wards, Draco knew. He had donated himself to fix them when they had been broken shortly after the war by a group of former Death Eaters attacking hospital. His mother had been asleep in one of those beds at the time, and Dark wizards protected what was important to them, or they didn’t deserve the title.  
  
But because he had donated to them, he also knew some of the secrets of how to break them.  
  
“Not good at undoing defensive magic, your serpents?” he asked, as he strolled up beside Potter. He looked at him from the corner of one eye, and smiled as he saw more sleek shapes roiling around him like currents in a stew. If he kept this up, and they grew closer and Potter more comfortable with the Dark Arts in general, then Draco thought he should be able to see the snakes in detail someday.  
  
“This is the kind of magic that will kill them if it touches them,” Potter said, his eyes locked on the ward shimmering in front of them. He reached out one hand as though he would touch it, and then drew back. “I can _feel_ that. It’s meant to kill any Dark magic.” He turned his head and locked those gorgeous eyes on Draco. “Which must mean that my snakes really are Dark magic. You were right.”  
  
Draco turned his head modestly aside—which he didn’t really feel but which would make him look good to Potter—and spent a moment studying the ward. Then he nodded. “We can do this,” he said, and drew the silver ball from his pocket.  
  
“What is that?” Potter swayed. Then he shook his head and looked at his legs as if they had betrayed him.  
  
“An artifact of great power,” Draco said, and smiled at him. “That you can feel it so clearly just means that you’re becoming more sensitive to magic. It’s nothing to regret.” He stepped forwards, and the ward reared up in front of him and spat a warning. Draco disregarded it. He had enough knowledge of both forms of magic to know that its apparent ability to destroy Dark wizards with a touch was only advertising.   
  
He held the ball up in front of him and clenched his fingers down on it. Small holes clicked open in the surface as the top layer of metal slid back. Draco turned his hand to the side and slid the ball up and down.  
  
Where it traveled, the ward vanished. Its magic flowed into the small holes, and the ball glowed and swelled with power. Draco could feel the complicated pressure in its depths changing the magic, altering its nature. By the time he had left the ball alone for a few days, it would have become pure, raw power, able to be used for Dark or light magic as the wizard who owned the ball decreed.  
  
He didn’t try to consume the whole of the ward. It would only terrify the people who came hunting them, and Draco wanted to force them into respect instead. He moved backwards and gestured courteously for Potter to precede him.  
  
Potter spent a long moment looking at him before he dived through. Draco strolled after him, turning his head so that he could admire the neat hole in the wards.  
  
Which was how he saw the Healer behind them who aimed his wand and spoke a single, choked curse.   
  
But not in time to do anything about it.  
  
*  
  
Harry felt his shoulders coiling tighter and tenser as they came nearer and nearer to the exit. Surely something would happen, right now and here, to keep them from leaving? The Healers seemed to have pulled back and be willing to let them escape. Was it just they had seen that the cost of opposing them was too great?  
  
But he didn’t believe that, and when the white snake hissed and whipped around, Harry knew where the danger was coming from.  
  
He whirled around and launched the flying snake from his fist like a falcon. It glided down and through the hole in the ward, covering the arm of the Healer who stood there. For a moment, it glowed, lit from within, by the curse that he had been trying to hurl towards them. Harry knew, for that moment, a simple, fierce gladness that the curse had not managed to touch Malfoy.  
  
Then the snake and the curse vanished together.  
  
Harry staggered. The feeling of overwhelming loneliness and loss that worked its way through him had not been something he’d expected. He went to his knees, his arms wrapped around his head and his breathing shallow.  
  
Malfoy kicked him. Being assaulted by dragonhide boots _hurt_ , but Harry didn’t get the chance to tell him so. As he turned to look, Malfoy grabbed his arms and hauled him up. He hissed into Harry’s face as though he was speaking Parseltongue, “I know it hurts, to have a part of you destroyed like that. But we’re not going to survive if we stay here. That means we have to _move._ Do you know what _move_ means?”  
  
Harry jerked himself the rest of the way upright and nodded. Then he began to run again, directly towards the fireplaces this time, and didn’t look back. Malfoy was following him, and that was enough.  
  
His whole body was aflame with many things, multiple emotions, and he wasn’t sure which one would come roaring out if he opened his mouth right now. So all the better to wait until they were through the fireplace, and the whirling Floo motion had spat them out on Malfoy’s obviously expensive carpet.  
  
*  
  
Draco stood up and dusted the soot off his arms, pinning each occurrence of the last five minutes flat under glass in his mind so that he could evaluate it.  
  
Yes, he had been too self-confident. He had thought they could escape from hospital without a single wound other than the ones Weasley had inflicted on him in their duel and the emotional ones Potter had taken from seeing his friends again. He had let his guard slip. Surely there must have been _something_ he could have done to prevent the necessity of Potter’s sacrificing one of his snakes—which was exactly what happened, Draco did not doubt.  
  
When he came to that point in the evaluation, however, he broke the glass and let his emotions go free. He knew, better than anyone, how useless self-recrimination was. He had made a mistake, and would make sure that he did not make it again. That was not the same as going over the mistake again and again in his mind, and wondering how he could alter it. There was a reason he had never learned the time-travel spells that were also a part of the Dark Arts.  
  
He turned towards Potter and found him crouching on the floor, his head bowed and his breathing hurried as though he would faint. Draco reached behind him, found a glass of sweetened water standing ready where he had directed the house-elves to leave it, and mixed it with a Calming Draught from the store of potions carried on a secure belt around his waist. All the time, he watched the air around Potter, but could only make out the thick, pale gleam towards his feet that seemed to be the white snake that had accompanied him from the Dark paths.   
  
“Drink this,” Draco said, and crouched down to extend the glass of water.  
  
Potter reached up with his eyes glittering, and hissed out something incomprehensible. Draco shook his head. “I can’t understand you when you speak like that, which means the fine scolding you’re giving me is wasted,” he said.  
  
Potter drew himself up, gasped as though surfacing from deep water, and snapped, “You cost me a _snake_.”  
  
“I didn’t know that I would,” Draco said, which was the closest he would come to an apology, and thrust the glass more strongly at him. “You won’t get anything done, including revenge on me, if you lie there like a gutted fish.”  
  
Potter stared incredulously at him for a few seconds, and then lashed out his hand and took the water from Draco as though he wanted to spill it. He didn’t succeed; Draco’s grip on the side was too steady. After one more glare, Potter tipped the water down his throat. He coughed and spluttered and choked a minute later, and Draco had to smile in spite of himself. He watched, carefully, and then finally Potter turned away from him and blinked calmer eyes. Both pupils had achieved the same proportion, Draco noticed, neither exactly like a snake’s nor like a human’s.  
  
“I didn’t know they could die,” Potter whispered.  
  
Draco nodded. “That’s something I’d read about but never seen. But you saved my life, or at least my freedom, when it died. Thank you.”  
  
Potter glanced at him, blinking, as if he hadn’t realized that life-debts might be part of what lay between them now. Then he swallowed and nodded. “What are you carrying?” he added, staring at the cobra around Draco’s arm.  
  
Draco smiled and held it out. He hadn’t planned to do this, but he hadn’t planned for Potter to have to sacrifice one of his snakes, either. Perhaps this would fulfill the debt that it seemed he owed Potter, through no fault of his own. “Is he not wonderful? This is the kind of cobras that the Unspeakables are breeding now, the ones who are commanded to obey only the directions of one particular voice. Weasley was carrying it. I took it away from him and left him with the command not to oppose us anymore.”  
  
*  
  
Harry started to meet Malfoy’s eyes and say something about how that was close to the Imperius Curse, and how he would _never_ have wanted someone to do anything like that to his best friend—  
  
And then he closed his mouth, and swallowed, and looked at the cobra instead. Why was Ron coming after him for Parseltongue, when he fought with one of these?  
  
The cobra was a dark silvery snake, with its body sliding back and forth and gleaming like shadows whenever it turned its head. Harry reached out with one hand, and it opened its mouth and showed its fangs. Harry blinked, pulled his hand back, and tried Parseltongue instead, wondering if the spell that Malfoy had used on Ron had commanded the cobra to listen to him, too.  
  
“ _What are you like?”_  
  
The cobra writhed and shut its mouth, then gave a low, agitated hiss that Harry couldn’t understand. Then it turned and looked up at Malfoy. Yes, he had cast the spell that gave him control over it, Harry decided.  
  
“You may obey him,” Malfoy told the snake, and spent a moment touching the sleek back before he extended his arm to Harry again. “But I would like to retain some control for study purposes.”  
  
Harry took a deep breath as the emotions in him tilted and found another outlet. “ _That’s_ the only reason you decided to rescue me, isn’t it? Not all the rot about how I should learn to control myself and how there should be more Dark wizards in the world. You want to _study_ me, and see how I react to your spells.”  
  
Malfoy smiled at him. “I admit that was part of it. But if I’d left you there, you would be mad or dead by now, so I think I deserve some thanks, and my motive might not matter as much as you think it does.”  
  
Harry shook his head. He didn’t think he could speak. “I didn’t—I mean,” he said, and bowed his head. Yes, he could speak, but the words that he forced past the block in his throat made no sense. He was actually grateful for the Calming Draught, because although the effect wasn’t that great, he didn’t think he would have been able to make sense at all without it. “You fought Ron,” he said.  
  
Malfoy nodded. “And I am debating whether I should tell you what he said or not, because while it might predispose you to my side, it could also upset your mental balance. And that is the last thing we need right now.”  
  
Harry smiled at him, and felt the venom stir in his cheeks. “Because I’m so close to losing it already?”  
  
“Yes,” Malfoy said, with a calm candidness that made Harry blink and feel as if the venom was retreating a little from the surface of his skin. “But also because I think that he is simply prejudiced against someone who can hurt others effortlessly, the way you can. If you corrected that mistaken prejudice, perhaps he would help us. I issued a mental command that he cannot fight us, at least.”  
  
Harry took another breath, and the world reeled inside his head again. He sat down and closed his eyes, concentrating on the feel of the smooth surface of the chair under him. St. Mungo’s had had no furniture half so comfortable; sometimes Harry thought he had slept there only because he had nothing else to do.   
  
Then he opened his eyes and said, “Will you tell me why you would welcome his interference? What _exactly_ are your plans?”  
  
*  
  
Draco smiled. He couldn’t help it. Lingering pain in his head and ribs or not, the world _sang_ around him, and Potter was a large part of the reason why. He didn’t want the surge of blood in his veins or of plans in his head to slow yet.  
  
And now Potter might go along with this. Draco deposited the snake in Potter’s lap and moved a few steps away. When he paced like this, with the world spinning along, he might easily fling the cobra from his arm.  
  
“I want to make the Dark Arts a legitimate practice in Britain again,” he said. “The way it is on the Continent. I want those who have the strength for it to confront that strength, instead of retreating because they fear it.”  
  
He turned back to see Potter staring at him above the cobra’s head. The cobra was tasting Potter’s wrist with a gentle tongue, as if wondering whether it wanted to obey someone who could speak to it in its own language. But Potter shook his head in the next instant, and his eyes narrowed. “Funny, Malfoy.”  
  
“It may sound that way to you,” Draco said simply. “But it is my great ambition, and I see no reason why I should disguise that from you.”  
  
Potter shut his eyes, opened them again. Then he said, “If you’re interested in that, why would you want me to speak with Ron and Hermione and try to persuade them around to my side again?”  
  
Draco couldn’t help it. He moved forwards and knelt in front of Potter the way he had in the hospital room, his fingers playing lightly along Potter’s wrist. Potter tried to pull away, but this time, Draco insisted on maintaining the contact, and not even the threatening swirls of light he saw from the corners of his eyes or the way that the cobra eased forwards, smooth as oil in water, could deter him.  
  
“That’s part of it,” he said softly. “Why do they fear you? For no rational reason. I even tried to speak to Weasley about that, to point out that you are hardly the sort of man one would expect to become a mad Dark Lord intent on killing people. He denied that you could be anything else.” Potter’s pulse leaped beneath his touch, and Draco dipped his head and rested his cheek against the skin for a moment. Potter might sometimes need the touch of a human, and not only a snake. “That is his fear talking. Not his courage, not his loyalty, not his affection for you. His _fear._ ”  
  
“And you despise cowards,” Potter said in a musing tone, his eyes fastened on Draco’s face.  
  
Draco reached his hand up to slide along Potter’s cheek, to feel the swelling there and the way that his jaw had begun to narrow and turn triangular. “Yes. I was one once, and I could not begin to master the Dark Arts until I left that behind. And someone as faithful to you as Weasley can begin to turn away from you because of his own cowardice. The Dark Arts scare him, not you. The old tales of Parselmouths, not you. The same with Granger. In this case, research would not help her, because most of the books on Parseltongue were written by those who feared Salazar Slytherin. And I’m sure she’s passed that venom along to Weasley, pouring his ears full of poison that helps no one. You aren’t evil, Potter. They don’t really believe you are—or they wouldn’t if they paused to think about it for one moment. But we must counteract that. I don’t intend to hide in any traditional way. I intend for us to make ourselves invulnerable for the moment, and then move. Take the fight for the Dark Arts into the open.”  
  
Potter sat back and gaped at him. Draco smiled. That was happening a lot lately. It was very satisfying.  
  
“That’s the reason I want them on our side,” he whispered into Potter’s face, standing up and leaning in. “Because your side is mine, now, and anyone that can be turned away from their irrational fear is an ally.”  
  
Potter closed his eyes, blinked them open. Then he swallowed and said, “Malfoy, this is—overwhelming. I think I need some food and sleep before I think about it again.”  
  
Draco nodded and clapped to summon his house-elves. “Of course. Do think about it. The softest beds and the most luxurious foods are yours.”  
  
Potter staggered up and out of the room, accompanied by the cobra and the swirling mist that was probably his serpents. Draco closed his eyes and tilted his head back, letting his throat strain to hold back the howl that wanted to rise.  
  
Then he went to firecall Pansy. Because he was _winning_ , and he wanted someone to share in the triumph, right here, right now.


	8. Antivenin

  
“This is being Master Harry’s bedroom.”  
  
That was what the house-elf said to him, the house-elf who didn’t look at him with the delight that Malfoy did but also not the fear that his friends did, and the house-elf he could _see_ without snakes crawling all over his vision. That made it normal, and something Harry was happy to accept right now.  
  
Besides, what he could see of the bed from the door looked like a decadent sea of sheets and blankets. Harry stepped eagerly forwards, and ran his hand down one of the pillowcases. It felt like satin. He sighed, and by his feet the white snake sighed as well, and flowed up the bed. Most of the others had gone, except for the Unspeakable cobra on his wrist. When Harry set it down and told it to slither into a corner, though, it did, curling up near the roaring fire.  
  
Harry shivered as he tucked himself into the bed, which was a neutral off-white, and wondered if he would become cold-blooded like his snakes. He hoped not. That would be a rather hard thing to control, and would give him a lot of disadvantages in a fight.  
  
“What will Master Harry be wanting to eat?”  
  
Harry’s eyelids slipped closed, but his stomach rumbled, too, and he reckoned that he would probably be starving if he woke up later. He forced himself to sit up and say, “I want—soup. Hot bread. _Lots_ of meat. And butterbeer.” Malfoy would probably laugh at him for that last one, but it was warm, and that was Harry’s main requirement for food right now.  
  
“Master Harry,” the elf said, and vanished. Harry leaned back on the pillows and spent a moment looking around the room, wondering what Malfoy’s decorating choices said about him as a person.  
  
Not much, as it turned out. Or maybe someone else had decorated this room, or Harry just wasn’t good at reading someone else from their coloring choices. It could have been any and all of those, and Harry would have been forced to declare most of them correct.   
  
The walls were shades of pale. Sometimes white, sometimes blue, sometimes crystal, Harry thought, but it seemed he could never turn his head fast enough to catch one color actually melting into another; they just sat there and sparked smugly at him. The light from the fire made the colors seem to shift and dance and change, anyway.  
  
The bed was huge, but not high, which explained how he’d been able to stumble into it so easily. The main feature seemed to be lots and lots of pillows, and a huge fold on the side which Harry thought was a curtain at first but turned out to be piled blankets. He leaned back against the pillow, and nodded. Yes, it bounced beneath him in some places and gave in others. He knew it would be comfortable to sleep in.  
  
And there was a window that overlooked someplace sunny, at least from the shine through it, and lots of bookshelves, and the enormous fireplace. The ceiling was so high that Harry thought something could be hiding up there, out of reach from the firelight, but at the moment, he didn’t really care if that was so. It would be a struggle to stay awake until the elves came back with the food.  
  
 _You must stay awake. Brother. You will need your strength, and you have not eaten nourishing food in far too long._  
  
Harry turned his head. The white snake was curled up in front of him, body mostly wrapped in coils but head extended in a straight length and eyes fixed on him.  
  
“ _Why is that_?” Harry asked quietly. “ _Do I need to feed you, too?”_  
  
The snake laughed quietly, or at least stuck his tongue out and lapped the air in a way that Harry thought of laughter. _We do not need to eat, brother. But we feed at your strength, and the things the cold one plans will take most of that._  
  
Harry wondered why they called Malfoy the cold one, but decided that it probably made as much sense as anything else as a nickname. “ _So you think that we should stay here?”_ He reached out, hesitated a moment, and then smoothed his fingers down and around the snake’s jaw when it tilted its head in encouragement. The snake yawned, showing off the delicate fangs that seemed to be the only teeth it had.  
  
 _Yes. It is the best den we have found so far, and the cold one will protect you until you are strong. And then there are other places._  
  
Harry had to admit that sounded sensible, and while part of him wasn’t resigned to trusting the snakes or Malfoy, he didn’t know that he could trust anyone else right now, either. He leaned back on the pillow and waited for the food to arrive.  
  
*  
  
“I don’t believe you.” Pansy’s voice was flat, her eyes darting as though she was looking for Potter in the background of Draco’s drawing room.  
  
Draco leaned back and purred at her, lifting his own glass of sweetened water to his lips. He didn’t think he should drink anything alcoholic right now, not with his blood still doing fireworks behind his eyes. “Would I lie to you? Do you want to come over and meet him right now?”  
  
“You said he was tired,” Pansy reminded him, but her fingers clenched at her sides as if that could keep her from falling out of a high tree.  
  
And that, more than anything else, told Draco what was wrong. He leaned forwards and pitched his voice gently. “You’re scared. Now that we have Potter, you have to admit that my plans are real, and they could change the world. You don’t want to.”  
  
Pansy opened her eyes, and closed them. She said, her voice steady, “You know that I want practice of the Dark Arts to be legal again, Draco. It’s not that. I want to be what I _am_ , a Dark witch, in full sight of everyone.”  
  
Draco nodded, and waited. He thought he could speak her next words for her, if he wanted to be so crass, but he would not. Pansy deserved the same independence and sense of strength that Draco was trying to promote in Potter.  
  
The same as that which Draco deserved, in fact. But at the moment, he didn’t think he lacked it, which made it all the more serious for him to hold back a little and let other people develop it for themselves.  
  
Pansy licked her lips. Then she said, “I didn’t believe you. I know what you hoped, but I didn’t think you would ever manage to persuade Potter to join you, and without that—we didn’t have the chance you thought we did. We might have managed it in the future, but only with a different kind of planning. You were placing too much hope on Potter. I think I _counted_ on that.”  
  
Draco leaned forwards, to answer the unspoken question. “The Healers didn’t tell him the truth until too late, and then they did it in such a terrible way—this is speculation, but informed speculation—that he had no choice but to fight back if he wanted to live. And then his friends showed up, in the grip of that particular terror that only the Dark Arts inspire. That was the last straw, I think. He bound his friend Granger himself, and left it to me to fight Weasley. He trusted _me_ not to hurt him.”  
  
“And did you?” Pansy lounged back in a more comfortable chair, by the looks of it, her legs crossed and her smile wicked.  
  
“ _Pansy_ ,” Draco said in shock, and placed his hand delicately over his heart. “Are you saying that _you_ don’t trust me?”  
  
“I only know that there are many different ways in which you carry your promises out,” Pansy said, and wrapped her legs around each other, grinning at him. “Anyway, you didn’t answer this time. What did you do?”  
  
“Weasley can’t fight us now,” Draco said. “And I acquired the weapon he was using. I am rather impressed with it, and I think it can further our studies.” He paused, and then _had_ to explode out of his chair and pace back and forth. Pansy moved a little closer to the fire to watch better, he saw out of the corner of his eye. “Pansy, this is _finally happening._ We’re finally going to promote _real_ magic again. Magic that’s powerful, that you can only master if you face it.”  
  
“And that’s another means of closing Muggleborns out of the wizarding world,” Pansy murmured.  
  
Draco shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind them so much if they’d face the Dark Arts and learn them like anyone else. But there are so many of them in Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, and that prejudices them against real magic before a Slytherin even gets to open their mouths.”  
  
Pansy snorted. She knew as well as him that Hufflepuffs didn’t have the open prejudice against Slytherins that Gryffindors did, but they encouraged their Housemates even more, by their passive acceptance of certain things as “good” and “right,” to only do and believe in those certain things. By the time that Draco or someone like him could find them and teach them about their own aptitudes, it was generally too late.  
  
“If we can get Granger on our side, she could be a powerful advocate,” Pansy said, and then grinned at him. “And I want to be there when you talk to her.”  
  
“You can,” Draco said, making his smile all the bigger. “In fact, I wanted to know if you would come here to meet Potter, when he wakes up.”  
  
Pansy blinked rapidly, and Draco felt the dizzying swirl of his thoughts again. He was moving so fast that his best friends and closest allies couldn’t keep up with him. He knew that he might have to slow down for them to catch up, but he really didn’t think so. They should, instead, speed up and run beside him, he thought, so they could know the wind in their faces in the same exhilarating way.  
  
Pansy finally inclined her head and said, “If you really think it best. If you think he wouldn’t run the other way the moment he saw me in the room.”  
  
Draco made his smile more winsome. “He began walking the Dark paths by himself; he found his way to them without instruction. And he let me show him the Hanging Tree. It would take more than your mere presence to frighten him.”  
  
Pansy’s eyes glinted, and Draco knew no baited hook could have taken a fish more effectively. Pansy walked the Dark paths herself, but it had taken her months to face the Hanging Tree, and even now she shuddered when she considered that she might end up there. She would want to meet, and better if she could, someone who had done the things she could not.  
  
Draco, he thought as they made arrangements to meet later, understood the same impulse. He had looked on his father and Professor Snape and wanted to practice the same kind of magic that they did. And he had looked at Potter and wanted to be as good a Seeker as he was, as beloved, as famous.  
  
The last desire might never happen. But by acting as a mentor to Potter when he was walking the Dark paths, he could at least show that he wasn’t intimidated by him, and get the satisfaction from showing off his powers.  
  
After that, there was nothing to do but have a small meal and indulge in a bit of Potions experimentation while he waited for Potter to descend.  
  
*  
  
Harry opened his eyes, shuddering. He had dreamed that Ron and Hermione were standing in front of him, their arms folded and their faces cold and closed. They had told him, without words, that they hated his Parseltongue and his snakes and that because he was using them willingly, he could never come back and live with his friends. Then they turned their backs, and left Harry to the hell of a cold, dark universe.  
  
 _Not so cold with us. Brother._  
  
The nose of the white snake rose into view, and its intense eyes examined him. Harry reached out and rested a hand on its head, which felt warm from the fire, closing his eyes so that the shudders could drain out of him.  
  
Was that the kind of price he would have to pay, if Malfoy was right and he couldn’t turn back from his commitment to the Dark Arts? It seemed worse to him at the moment than the spitted heart on the Hanging Tree, or whatever other punishments awaited less than committed seekers on other paths.  
  
But he had paid that price already, if Malfoy’s words about Ron were true, if he trusted his eyes when it came to Hermione. His friends wouldn’t simply accept and congratulate him on the Parseltongue. He had to prove that going Dark wasn’t the same as going mad, and there could be sane Parselmouths.  
  
Harry swung his legs out of bed and sniffed at his armpits, wrinkling his nose. He hadn’t had a bath or shower since he was in hospital. He looked around now, and made out a door in a shadowy corner of the bedroom, behind a bookshelf. Snakes flowed and dripped around him as he hastened towards it.  
  
The house-elf who had brought his meal—or at least Harry thought it was the same one—appeared with a little bow and handed him a green dressing robe, then hung a dark shirt and trousers and formal robes on a rack behind the door. The bathroom was enormous, white tile or marble with silver fixtures. Harry stepped into the shower and looked in vain for a door or curtain, but when the water began to descend like rain from the showerhead above him, he realized there was a spell hovering in midair above the edge of the stall that caught the water and directed it back in.  
  
And the water was as warm as the summer rain it resembled. He relaxed and closed his eyes so that he could work the thick-scented shampoo he’d found into his hair, as well as avoid watching the water run brown down his skin.  
  
When he wanted to dry himself, there were fluffy towels available, and he wrapped the dressing gown around him while he dried his hair. He peered into the enormous mirror that Malfoy had hanging on the wall, and snorted. Well, his hair was never going to lie flat. He would have to do the best job he could with the array of combs available, and Malfoy would have to live with the result.  
  
Harry continued staring into the mirror when he was finished, though. This close, he could see other changes. Yes, his pupils had altered, and his cheeks still bulged out slightly with the venom sacs, and concentrating on his front teeth altered them so that they flickered longer and thinner. And now that he looked, there was something faint and black running along his temples under the bottom of his hair. He reached up and touched it, turning his head to the light so that there was no mistaking it.  
  
No, he had been right. He bore a thin band of green-black scales right there.  
  
Harry shivered and licked his lips. He forced himself to turn his back so that he could trace the scales all around the curve of his skull. He wondered if scales would eventually replace his hair, but so far, he didn’t think that had happened. Instead, the scales were growing where he had had skin before.  
  
He shut his eyes for a moment, and then resumed combing and flattening, while the serpents curled comfortingly around his legs.  
  
 _Only what I accept. Only what I commit to. If I find the changes distressing, then they’ll stop. That’s what Malfoy implied, and that’s what I have to believe, until I find some evidence that it’s otherwise._  
  
*  
  
Draco looked up from the chart of experimental ingredients in front of him at the same moment as Pansy turned away from her book of Arithmancy equations. They had both heard the slight footsteps proceeding towards the drawing room.  
  
Draco wondered if Pansy could hear, as he could, the sounds of snakes moving, too, like someone continually taking an indrawn breath.  
  
And then Potter was there, standing with his fingers pinching shut the folds of his formal robes around himself. He wore black, because that was what Draco had directed the house-elves to give him, except for the shirt, which was the same shade of dark green as the center of his eyes now. He paused, stared at Pansy, and then nodded and faced Draco, his mouth opening in what looked like a challenging hiss.  
  
He didn’t speak in Parseltongue, though. “What is she doing here?” he asked Draco, eyes tracking back to Pansy as though she was a sign of plague.  
  
Draco smiled and stood up. “This is Pansy Parkinson, my best friend and collaborator in my scheme to bring the Dark Arts to life,” he said, and left it up to Pansy to tell Potter which branch of the Dark Arts she specialized in. It was rude to mention that when someone could have the pride of telling a stranger herself.  
  
Potter turned to face Pansy, and they locked eyes. Draco blinked, surprised when Pansy’s smile deepened. He had thought she would shrink in the face of Potter’s power or challenge him with all the sulkiness about this plan that she couldn’t show to Draco. Instead, she looked distinctly delighted, and rose to her feet to hold out her hand a moment later.  
  
“You never insulted me by refusing to take my hand,” she said easily. “I’d still like to shake yours. Will you?”  
  
Potter turned his head and blinked at Draco for a moment, as though to ask what the hell was going on here. Since Draco didn’t know himself, he half-ducked his head and shrugged, spreading his hands wide.  
  
Everything was up to Potter, and he didn’t send Pansy fleeing to scream about his rudeness elsewhere. Instead, he reached out hesitantly and accepted her hand. Draco saw her eyelashes flutter as her fingers slid around Potter’s wrist, and for a moment, flashes of green lightning seared his vision.  
  
Then he choked it back. So Potter’s power made him hard. That didn’t mean he and Potter would ever sleep together. Dark or not, Potter remained a Gryffindor, and for them, that required a level of trust that Draco didn’t think they could climb to.  
  
 _Unless he changes in other ways. He’s already changed more than I thought if he can reach the Dark paths on his own._  
  
Draco choked hope this time. It might happen, it might not. The important thing was to keep their eyes on the goal of getting the Dark Arts accepted, and remember that, along the way, other gifts might appear that could be accepted with pleasure.  
  
“You’re _strong_ ,” Pansy said, and opened her eyes again to give Potter a look of invitation that made him rear back. Draco smiled, and didn’t care that Pansy might see it when she turned in his direction again. Yes, that was exactly the wrong way to get someone like Potter—still unsure of his footing in the Dark Arts and this alliance—to sleep with her. He hoped that she remembered it.  
  
If she knew it, Pansy didn’t seem abashed. She sat down again and told Potter, “My specialty in the Dark Arts is tracking and finding spells.”  
  
Potter remained standing, with the cobra curled around his wrist and the swirling mist that Draco knew was the snakes draping his shoulders. “That doesn’t sound Dark,” he said. “Why would the Ministry ban them?”  
  
Draco smiled in spite of himself this time. Those were the kinds of questions that he needed Potter to ask if they were to be partners in this endeavor, questions that probed into the nature of the Ministry’s decisions on the matter—and Draco’s and Pansy’s—instead of simply and mindlessly accepting things the way they were.  
  
Then he caught Pansy’s eye, and cut the smile off his face. _It won’t do to become besotted with Potter himself, instead of his power. Luckily, I can use Pansy as a scale of when I’m heading in that direction._  
  
*  
  
Harry knew that there were currents swirling around him that he didn’t understand, and that likely had something to do with the way the smile disappeared from Malfoy’s face and the prim way that Parkinson folded her arms in. But he could figure them out later. For now, he just wanted to know the answers to the obvious questions.  
  
He swayed a little as he waited for Parkinson to speak, and the white snake lifted his head and hissed in agitation. _Brother. You should conserve your strength, still. Sit._  
  
Harry was glad enough to do that, bracing his hands carefully out to the sides so that he wouldn’t simply collapse. Then he focused on Parkinson again, whose expression had changed. Harry didn’t know enough about her to figure out what raised eyebrows and pursed lips signified, though, so he just watched, and waited.  
  
Parkinson inclined her head a moment later, as though paying tribute to Harry’s ignorance, and said, “So. The finding and tracking spells I’ve mastered tell me where someone’s heart’s desire is hidden. Or their secrets. Or the most valuable possession in their houses.”  
  
Harry flushed, because he felt stupid for not figuring out why the Ministry might have banned those. But—“They still don’t sound Dark,” he said, throwing a glance at Malfoy. “Not in the way that Malfoy defined the Dark for me, with risks to the caster.”  
  
Parkinson smiled. “The spells are difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t cast them, but basically, they allow me to confront the protections surrounding those secrets and…other things I hunt…in a nonmaterial realm, rather than physically. It’s spiritual combat, mental combat. That can tear bits and pieces off the unprepared caster, not to mention what it could do to someone who’s trying to get through Dark protections. I’m a Dark witch.”  
  
She spoke it the same way Malfoy did, Harry thought, as if it was a source of pride. He wondered if he would ever think of it that way, rather than just what he had to put up with in order to gain control over Parseltongue.  
  
Because he had no intention of allowing Malfoy to control him, or going along with more than absolutely necessary. Malfoy had rescued him, and Harry owed him a debt for that, and would pay his debts. But he wouldn’t let Malfoy make him into a puppet, an obedient slave of his plans to legalize the Dark Arts.  
  
“So.” Malfoy leaned back and looped his ankles across each other. Harry would have found it laughable once. Not now. “The news that you escaped won’t yet be out, Potter, any more than the news of what they told you was. It’s the kind of news the Ministry will want to control, because it could cause a panic, and the Healers, because it would make them look bad, that you preferred my tender mercies to theirs.” When he smiled, Harry thought, his cheeks bulged as though he had food hidden in them. “So we have a little time. We need to begin moving, though, so as not to allow our enemies to checkmate us.”  
  
“They know where we fled to,” Harry pointed out. “They know that we used illegal spells to oppose them, too.” He swallowed as he thought of Hermione’s pleading eyes, of what Ron had probably looked like. “How in the world are we going to make that look good?”  
  
“It’s a good thing that you have such big eyes,” Malfoy said, cocking his head. “And I’ve already noticed the shape of your pupils changing since you came here. I think you can control them and make them perfectly round again, if you want. It seems to depend on how close you are to the snakes at any given moment, how much magic you’re using.”  
  
“What do my eyes have to do with anything?” Harry said, and folded his arms in tight to his sides when he noticed one of the vipers who had put the Healers to sleep moving towards Malfoy. He didn’t want to attack him.  
  
 _It would not be an attack, brother,_ said the white snake. _Only self-defense._  
  
 _Yeah, well, I don’t want that, either,_ Harry hissed, although mentally rather than aloud, and felt the snakes draw back.  
  
The sensation that swept through him when he felt that made him shiver. It was…indescribable, to think that he had such control over something he had thought only a few days ago would destroy his life.  
  
He looked back to Malfoy, who was smiling at him.  
  
“We’re going to give the papers a sob story,” Malfoy said calmly. “All about the mean Healers and how the Ministry didn’t help you, complete with photographs of your giant eyes and your noble, sobbing face. It’ll look better if your pupils are round for that. For other audiences, you can let them fall back into the shape I think is natural now.”  
  
Harry drew in his breath to say that he would never do anything like that…  
  
And let it out again. He had also once thought that he would never command conjured snakes to attack people, or fight his best friends.   
  
He nodded. “When do we start?” he asked.


	9. In a Snake's Eyes

  
“You think we can trust Rita _Skeeter_?”  
  
The way Potter’s voice soared on those last words was really rather charming, Draco thought oddly, as he leaned back and admired the owl he was composing. In this case, the words were less important than the thick, creamy parchment and the watermark near the bottom, set in transparent blue on the paper, that stamped it as his personal property. Skeeter would see that, and _that_ , more than the mere mention of Potter’s name, would guarantee she would read the letter.  
  
“Not so much trust her as her greed,” Draco murmured, turning his head to the side and trying to make out all the glowing subtleties of the many-layered watermark, as he always did. And as they always did, all the subtleties eluded him. He knew that he _did_ see the Malfoy crest repeated time and time again, and that was enough. He continued writing—only the last line and his signature remained—without looking up at Potter. “She’ll jump at the chance to be the one who writes the first exclusive interview on you. Ever. That’s the prize, the bait, the catch. That you’re giving one after escaping from hospital and discovering that you’re a Dark wizard is the icing, not the cake itself.”  
  
“I’m not saying that I’m a Dark wizard.”  
  
Draco looked up. Potter lounged on the couch nearest the fire, where Draco had noticed he usually liked to be. Well, if his blood was beginning to turn sluggish like a snake’s, that only made sense, and Draco was generous with oddities that made sense and showed that Potter was accepting his gift. He didn’t particularly like the glare Potter leveled at him, or the way that the Unspeakables’ cobra on one wrist and the white shimmer that marked a snake of lasting strength and power on the other had both reared up to regard him.  
  
“But you are,” Draco said. “The moment you decided to accept your power instead of go mad and die, the moment you opened your eyes on the Dark paths, you were.”  
  
Potter huddled down inside his jumper—honestly, Draco needed to find him better clothes to wear before the interview, he thought Potter was requesting old things from the house-elves on purpose—and looked away. “That’s different from saying it,” he whispered.  
  
“In print?” Draco asked delicately, rising to his feet. “Where other people can see it, and connect it to you?”  
  
“Yes.” The whisper wouldn’t have been audible if Draco hadn’t been straining his ears for it.  
  
Draco crossed the distance between the table and the couch, and knelt down next to Potter. His hands curled around his wrists, and his thumbs rubbed back and forth. Potter’s skin was fever-hot under his touch, his pulse fever-fast.  
  
“It’s only a declaration,” Draco whispered back, mouth parted so that he stood a better chance of catching Potter’s slightly altered scent. He smelled delicately musty, like a snake shedding its skin. Draco wondered if he knew, and had begun to watch for long, mantled strips on the floor. Perhaps Potter would have scales underneath the top layer. “It’s only the merest sign of the inward revolution that you’ve had to undergo already. Tell me why it bothers you so much.”  
  
*  
  
When Malfoy was this close, Harry found it hard to think.  
  
There was no reason for that. He’d never thought the git particularly attractive before, and if he got all giddy about the Dark Arts, well, that was his cause and not Harry’s. Harry was only going along with this for his life and freedom. That was a very different matter than studying the Dark Arts for the reason Malfoy did, that he loved it and wanted Harry to love it, too.  
  
But perhaps enthusiasm was catching on its own. Harry found his breath coming shorter, and not with the panic that had woken him from confused dreams this morning. He could feel Malfoy’s breath on his cheeks, and was far from disliking the feeling; if the way that the venom sacs inside his cheeks seemed to grow smaller was any indication, _far_ from disliking it. And most telling, the cobra and the white snake had stopped rearing and lain down along his wrists, stretching their bodies out lazily to take advantage of the fire again.  
  
 _You can trust him, brother,_ said the white serpent, around an enormous yawn that revealed his fangs. Malfoy didn’t seem bothered by the fangs centimeters away from his fingers, but then, he couldn’t see them with the same degree of clarity that Harry had, or so he thought. _He only wants what is best for you._  
  
 _But how can I know that my definition of best and his are the same ones?_ Harry asked, in subvocal Parseltongue.  
  
He received a lazy sense of warmth back, and scowled. The useless snakes had gone back to sleep.   
  
He looked back up at Malfoy, and answered honestly, because he was too surprised by the snakes’ behavior to do otherwise. “Because I don’t think of myself as a Dark wizard, someone who really loves it and studies the magic. And not someone who’s corrupt and violent, either. That’s what the rest of the wizarding world is going to think, and my friends…” To his horror, his voice cracked. The white snake tightened around his wrist. Harry swallowed and continued, determined to show no more weakness in front of Malfoy. “We can’t change the reputation of the Dark Arts that way. I’d think you would care about _that._ I go around proclaiming I’m a Dark wizard and they’ll just tuck me away in those categories that you say are mistaken. They won’t judge me any differently. It won’t make any difference to them that I’m me and not a random Dark wizard.”  
  
Malfoy studied him for a moment, head on the side in a way that made him look like a curious cat. Then he reached out and ran his fingers from Harry’s knuckles up his forearm, pausing only to lift his hand over the cobra. Harry started and twitched, feeling the prickle of Malfoy’s nails at the end of fingertips that felt smooth.  
  
“You misunderstand,” Malfoy said gently. “You emphasize that you haven’t changed, and your reputation is the thing that readers will take away from the article. It’ll matter that you’re Harry Potter more than it will matter you’re a Dark wizard.”  
  
Harry stared at him, and then shook his head. “You’re wrong about that,” he said, and then corrected himself as Malfoy arched his eyebrows. “I mean, I think you’re wrong.”  
  
“You have more knowledge of how to fight a public relations battle than I do?” Malfoy chuckled, and the sound made Harry want to stretch. He told himself to stop it. He was just reacting that way because Malfoy was the one who understood and helped him, not because Malfoy had any special insight or attraction for him. “I am interested to hear that, considering how poorly you came off in the speeches and interviews you did give.”  
  
“Not public relations.” Harry closed his eyes and hid himself in the darkness behind them, the one place he could be private now that he heard the voices of the snakes only when he chose to listen. “But I know how I come off, and you’re overestimating the power my name has just the way that all the people who thought I could make some great change in the Ministry and slow down corruption did. Kingsley tapped me for that, you know, the first year I was in the Auror program. Thought people would stop nepotism and taking bribes because I _told_ them to. Ha. I don’t think so.”  
  
“Instead, they started figuring out what bribes you would take?” Malfoy asked gently.  
  
Harry opened his eyes and stared at him. He hadn’t told that much even to Ron, because the whole subject made him feel dirty, and it was such a resounding failure that he had slipped back into Auror training without a murmur. “How did you—”  
  
“I know the way the Ministry works,” Malfoy said, and came smoothly to his feet. “And I know more about the Dark Arts than you think, and how many wizards in Britain practice them. I think it’s time to show you the Net.”  
  
Harry blinked at him. “I didn’t think you were at home with Muggle things like that.”  
  
Malfoy laughed, long and deep, and the laughter made something coalesce in Harry’s chest, though it was probably the snakes’ reaction and not his. Snakes would like anyone who gave them a warm house, Harry thought defensively. “If Muggles have named one of their inventions after mine, that only shows that even they might think of a good metaphor in time. But I am sure mine is rather different.” He held out his hand. “Will you come with me and see?”  
  
Harry hesitated, but he had already made the biggest decision, and traveled past the place where he could have refused Malfoy’s hand. He took it.  
  
*  
  
Draco smiled as he opened the door of the large room beneath the Manor that had once been the cellar dungeons and had changed completely when it came into his possession. He knew that Potter had bad memories of this place, but other than walking with stiff shoulders along a couple of the corridors, he seemed well able to handle it.  
  
Draco heard Potter gasp behind him, but he didn’t turn to look at the expression on his face right away—partially because he wanted to savor it, and partially because he always liked to admire the Net himself.  
  
It filled the room, a long, spiraling stretch of silver wires spreading away from a single cauldron in the middle. Draco had based it on the orb weavers’ webs, as the most intricate natural models he could find that were still within his building capacity. Delicate lines hooked to the corners of the ceiling and the single enchanted window that Draco had installed for just this purpose; thicker ones wrapped the cauldron itself and soared over the walls. There was beauty here, and intricacy. Draco enjoyed both. He sometimes thought it was why he had so taken to the Dark Arts, because there were more spells in that branch of magic, and the variations on them and the clever things that could be done with them were neverending.  
  
He turned and smiled at Potter, who tilted his head back to gape at the threads on the ceiling. There, they formed the thickest and most interesting of the spirals, imitating the eye of a maelstrom. Draco saw serpent-shadows swaying around him, perhaps because it was colder here or because they wanted to protect Potter from something unfamiliar. Draco inclined his head and spoke with courtesy to them as well as to Potter.  
  
“Be welcome here. Nothing in this room can hurt you. They are quite inert unless touched, and even then, they only give information.”  
  
Potter snapped his gaze back to him, and Draco sighed in delight to find that his eyes had gone slitted again, to see the tips of his fangs peeking out from under his upper lip. Potter could remain like that forever, and Draco would never tire of looking at him. “What do you mean?” Potter asked hoarsely. “What _is_ this?”  
  
Draco smiled at him. “A single thread grows from that cauldron for every wizard in Britain who performs a Dark Arts spell,” he answered, gesturing at the center of the Net again. “And grows thicker the more they do.”  
  
Potter gaped at him, and then up at the ceiling, and then at the floor. Then he said, speaking as if the words were forced out of him by the nudging of a triangular head, “And where’s my thread?”  
  
Draco reached out, took his wrist—certain slotted shapes seemed to be forming there, under the skin—and led him towards the far left wall of the room. There lay a shining thread, silver-black, with the gently undulating movement of a serpent’s body. He reached out, guiding Potter’s hand with his, and made sure that their fingers touched the thread at the same time.  
  
The thread sang, a low, ringing chime that Draco thought he would be able to hear better with his body than his ears, at least if he was hearing it for the first time. From the look on his face, Potter was too stunned to really note _how_ he heard it. Draco laughed as they watched the tiny note appear, floating on the air, surrounded by a parchment-colored rectangle that made it easier to see the letters against the background of the Net:  
  
 _Harry James Potter. Parselmouth, user of Unforgivable Curses during the second war, used the Imperius Curse his first year of Auror training, walking the Dark paths._  
  
Potter tugged his hand back as if burned. Draco turned to face him, and waited for either praise or damnation. Coming from Potter, either would be exciting enough to make his face burn and his cock harden.  
  
And as long as he could tame that excitement and use it to work for him instead of the other way around, then Draco would welcome all the arousal that Potter could pour through his veins.  
  
*  
  
Harry felt his fingertips tingling as if stung, though he knew that Malfoy hadn’t infused the strands of the Net with poison. Instead, he stared at the letters floating there, and even the part about the Imperius Curse, which he hadn’t thought anyone knew, and felt how incredibly _dangerous_ this could be, at least if Malfoy took it into his head to blackmail anyone.  
  
“How does it know?” he asked quietly, and turned to face Malfoy, while the white snake twined up his arm and out to examine the thread more closely. Harry hoped it would tell him anything it learned. He understood that the snakes were mostly extensions of his senses, but he didn’t understand how they perceived the world; he was more than happy to let them do it and then report back to him. “How did you manage the spells that would tell it, rather?”  
  
Malfoy’s smile curved across his face, deep in the way it had been when he showed Harry the Hanging Tree. The more dangerous the manifestation of the Dark Arts was, Harry thought, the more Malfoy appeared to enjoy it. Of course, that only underlined the question of why he had caught Malfoy sometimes looking at _him_ with the same smile.  
  
“It was an effort,” Malfoy said. “And involved several days of casting, and several days of potions. But I think of this as the most magnificent of my achievements. That is why Dark Arts are not solely useful in battle or politics, as most people think they are. You could not cast this in the split second that you might have to decide, in a battle situation.”  
  
Harry bit his lip and tilted his head to study the way his thread spiraled around another. “No, you couldn’t,” he said quietly. He didn’t know what else to say. He agreed with Malfoy that it was magnificent, but he was also wary of inflating Malfoy’s head with too much praise.  
  
“The Imperius Curse in your first year of training,” Malfoy said easily, coming directly to the point that Harry had hoped he wouldn’t. But he reckoned that he would have to learn to defend himself at his weakest points, and so he straightened his shoulders and met Malfoy’s gaze.  
  
Malfoy didn’t ask why. He didn’t have to.  
  
Harry sighed. “There was one instructor who told me that he was sure I didn’t deserve to be there, and that I would fail his exams no matter what happened. I thought it didn’t matter, that I could still stay in the program if I explained the situation to Kingsley. But then Kingsley wasn’t re-elected that year, and this man kept gloating that he was going to destroy me. I found out that he thought I hadn’t won the war fast enough, that someone with the innate talent for Auror work everyone else thought I had would have spared the Aurors the burden they had to carry.”  
  
“During the _war_?” Malfoy’s voice rang with the sound of a bronze gong. “Half the Aurors then were busy following the orders of the Dark Lord!”  
  
“Only because of Pius Thicknesse,” Harry snapped, his pulse quickening and the white snake turning from its study of the thread to rear beside him. “They weren’t to know that he was under Voldemort’s control.”  
  
Malfoy leaned towards him, his eyes wide with something Harry could only describe as the delight of battle, or maybe delight in dangerous things. “Will you stop making excuses for them?” he whispered. “They didn’t find the solution for the Parseltongue driving you mad, did they? They didn’t stand by you, but let Weasley cast you into St. Mungo’s.”  
  
“I’d hurt someone,” Harry said, and that reminded him that he didn’t know whether Kipling had lived or died, and hadn’t thought to ask since he was at Malfoy’s house. Well, he would probably live, since he was on the mend the last that Harry had heard. “And I used the Imperius Curse on this instructor to make him stop harassing me. I didn’t tell you that, either. That’s something normal people don’t do.”  
  
“Maybe not normal people,” Malfoy said. “But Dark wizards do.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes and stood there for a moment, letting the white serpent hiss without words, soothing him, and more vipers come into being around his legs. Vipers seemed to be his weapon of choice, he thought, perhaps because he found it easier to imagine new varieties of them, with new kinds of venom. He didn’t imagine them biting Malfoy, because that wasn’t what he wanted, but knowing they were there helped.  
  
“I’ve done horrible things, that’s all I’m saying,” he said at last. “And I can’t blame them for not realizing during the war that they were obeying the orders of someone under Imperius.”  
  
Silence. Harry wondered for a moment if Malfoy had left the Net chamber, and then heard footsteps in front of him. He hadn’t managed to open his eyes fully before Malfoy slapped him.  
  
The white serpent tried to strike at once, hissing, but Harry had lifted his arm to half-defend himself, and that spoiled the serpent’s lunge. It tried again, but by that time, Harry had recovered his balance, and hissed an order to stop. The white snake turned its head and locked eyes with him.  
  
 _He did that to prove a point,_ Harry said in subvocal Parseltongue. _Let’s see what it is, and if I don’t like it, then you can bite him._  
  
That seemed good enough for the white snake, as far as it went. The head settled back against Harry’s shoulder, and the dead eyes locked on Malfoy, although the curl and surge of the great body remained, so that it was ready to pump in venom at a moment’s notice.  
  
Harry licked his lips, swallowed, and said, “All right, Malfoy. So do you want to tell me why you did that?”  
  
*  
  
Draco relaxed his stance and pulled back his free hand from his robes, where it had hovered over a bezoar. He didn’t actually know if that would protect him from the special poisons that Potter had the ability to generate, but he knew Professor Snape had told him he believed it would be effective against Nagini.  
  
“Because you continue to blame yourself,” he said. “That’s what cripples you the most, not love for your friends or anything else.” Potter started, and Draco laughed. “Did you think that I believed love didn’t exist? It does. There are even some wizards who enter the Dark paths because of love. Not as common a motive as revenge, perhaps, but something being less common doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. They should have remembered that when they were telling you that no sane Parselmouths existed.”  
  
Potter bit savagely at the corner of his mouth. Draco calmed his own excitement when the blood began to run, and stood there for a moment watching Potter deal with the new perspective that Draco had opened to him.  
  
“But I was the one who cast the Imperius Curse,” Potter whispered. “And I was the one who hurt Kipling.”  
  
Draco clucked his tongue. “And do you think that someone else would feel the same crippling guilt, if they had hurt Kipling? Would Weasley? Would I?”  
  
“You wouldn’t,” Potter flared, and the creamy swirl above his wrist swayed in Draco’s direction the way it had when he slapped Potter. “But Ron would. He’s a good person.”  
  
Draco smiled at him. “Then a good person would have surrendered and gone along with the Healers when they wanted to neuter him? And he wouldn’t have walked the Dark paths and refused the gift of the Hanging Tree? And he wouldn’t have bound one best friend and left someone else to fight the other?”  
  
Potter paused. Draco could feel, if not see, the emotions swinging wildly back and forth in him, and wondered if even Potter knew which way he would jump in the next instant. He was still committed to thinking of himself as a good person, but that jostled with his new definition of himself as Dark wizard.  
  
Draco leaned forwards and spoke words that he hoped would be all the more compelling because softer.  
  
“That guilt isn’t what you need to feel. It doesn’t do anything for you. It didn’t prevent you from casting the Imperius Curse, and it didn’t prevent you from using the snakes as weapons. What can help you do that is _knowledge._ Knowledge of yourself as a Dark wizard, the risks you’ll take, and the way that you should really think about other people. They don’t have the right to unrealistic expectations of you, and you don’t have the right to blame yourself for crimes that you’ll excuse them for. Why shouldn’t there be one standard for everyone, and that standard includes you?”  
  
He could have said much more, about how Weasley had used a snake as a weapon and so on, but he thought that he should leave his words time to work. He stepped back and waited.  
  
*  
  
The white snake coiled, a string of coolness, along Harry’s neck, and said at last, with its tongue darting in many different directions, _I do not like the fact that he struck you. But what he says makes sense._  
  
Harry swallowed. His throat burned as though he was the one who had swallowed poison, and the motions of the vipers around his feet had increased until moving would be like walking through a sea of weed.  
  
If Ron could use snakes as weapons…  
  
If the Aurors could use Unforgivable Curses during the wars and not go to Azkaban…  
  
If other people could give interviews to the papers and use them to their advantage, as political tools…  
  
Those were all things that Harry would have made excuses for. Maybe for Ron most of all, but he wouldn’t have said the others were wrong. But if he did those things, he was wrong.  
  
Why?  
  
Why should he be the only one held to arbitrary, unfair standards? Why should he be the one feared, hated, detested above all, and why should he think that he deserved no sympathy, when he would have found sympathy for someone else in the same situation?  
  
 _Either everyone is treated the same way, or you acknowledge differences among people and make them. But not everyone, and then you._  
  
Harry swallowed. “I don’t know if I can speak to Skeeter today,” he said, while the warmth of poison in his throat seemed to loosen and the delighted white snake touched the corner of Harry’s eye with its tongue.   
  
“It will take longer than that to arrange the interview anyway,” Malfoy said, and caught Harry’s elbow. His voice was soft, so soft that Harry could make out no emotion. “Rather overwhelming to find that everything you’ve believed can be overturned, isn’t it?”  
  
Harry only nodded. He opened his eyes and stepped back to stand on his own, but the snakes twined around him, and he could feel his resistance to the interview melting.  
  
He wanted to speak with Ron and Hermione, and continue his friendship with them. But he also wanted to stop feeling so bad about his Parseltongue all the time, and he wanted to defend himself so that the Ministry and St. Mungo’s wouldn’t try to take him into custody again.   
  
Perhaps he had the right to do _both_ , not only the first.  
  
And as he stood there, thinking about it while Malfoy’s eyes and the white serpent’s shone, he could feel the _perhaps_ melting.


	10. More Than Slit Pupils

  
“ _What_ an honor, Mr. Potter. If you don’t mind me calling you that, since you aren’t exactly an Auror anymore?”  
  
Harry smiled, and made sure that none of his teeth showed. The concentration he’d used to reverse the serpentine features didn’t seem to work well on his fangs, or at least they reverted most when he wasn’t looking. He leaned forwards across the space between them and allowed his hand to glance across the back of Skeeter’s. He knew he didn’t mistake the way that her eyes widened or her breath caught. Among other things, the white snake would report those signs to him if he missed any of them.  
  
“I’d appreciate it,” he murmured. “I doubt the Aurors would want to be associated with me any more than I want to be associated with them.”  
  
Skeeter fastened on the hint of gossip as he had known she would, dipping her quill and sitting up as though it was a refreshing breeze. “ _Do_ tell me what you mean, Mr. Potter,” she murmured. “Or can I call you Harry?”  
  
Harry didn’t dare glance at Malfoy, who sat beside him on the sofa and sipped tea with the calm politeness of someone far removed from the situation. This was something he would have to make his mind up on and decide for himself. Either answer had its perils—encouraging Skeeter to treat him with some contempt, or sounding so distant that she wouldn’t write a sympathetic article.  
  
“Not right now,” Harry said finally, after giving the impression of long and tormented thought. Well, in some ways it had been that, although not for the reasons that Skeeter would decide it had been. “Maybe later, as we get to know each other better.”  
  
That seemed to be all right. Skeeter smiled at him and nodded. Malfoy shifted his weight, and Harry knew he would find a flicker of approval in his face if he glanced over at him.  
  
He didn’t, though. Malfoy had told him they should appear independent of each other, allies and not friends, as if it was accidental that Harry had ended up at Malfoy Manor after fleeing St. Mungo’s. Otherwise, Harry might alienate his friends and those readers who would still have a grudge against the Malfoys.  
  
The reasoning all made sense. And it didn’t make Harry’s head ache as much as politics in the Ministry had always done. He wondered what the difference was. Maybe he just found them more interesting when his life and freedom were at stake.  
  
“That’s fine,” Skeeter said. “Now. My first question. When did you first notice that your Parseltongue was coming back?”  
  
Harry widened his eyes and let his eyelashes tremble a little, the way Malfoy had suggested. They’d practiced it. Maybe Malfoy or Parkinson could have done it on command, but for the moment, Harry couldn’t, so it was better to look in the mirror and see, as Malfoy had put it, the “wide-eyed beauty” that he would come across to the readers of Skeeter’s article as. “A few months ago,” he whispered. “It was _frightening._ I hadn’t been able to speak to snakes in a while, or at least I hadn’t tried, and now I was seeing them everywhere.”  
  
Skeeter hummed sympathetically under her breath as she wrote. “And what was the reaction of the people around you?”  
  
“They were _scared_ ,” Harry said, and bowed his head. Malfoy had told him something about keeping sympathy and bitterness mixed in his expression, but Harry really doubted he had enough control of his face to do that. So he would just sound sad and breathless and let Skeeter assume things. “They didn’t know what to do. They wanted to help me, but…they thought I was going mental. Of course they wouldn’t always listen when I told them what they could do to help me.”  
  
There. It was real, but it cast what had happened into the most pathetic light possible. Harry knew that Skeeter and the people who read the article would eat it up.  
  
Skeeter practically purred as she wrote the words down, telling him that those had worked. “What did they do, specifically, Mr. Potter?” She patted him on the knee when he hesitated. “You can tell old Skeeter, you know. I would _never_ use these words for any purpose than telling the truth.”  
  
Harry saw the tremble of Malfoy’s teacup out of the corner of his eye. He was probably trying desperately to control his laughter.  
  
Harry bit his lip and looked up at Skeeter through his lashes, another motion that Malfoy had told him could be devastating and had advised him to practice. The way Skeeter flushed made Harry wonder about some interactions he’d had in the past with archivists and clerks and other people who seemed to melt when he talked to them. Maybe it was just his fame and the fact that _Harry Potter_ was asking them, but maybe not. “They said I should control it. Stop talking to snakes, stop seeing them. But how could I do that, when they were part of my magic and just _everywhere_?” He swallowed, and his voice turned into a whisper without his meaning it to. This was true, also. “They were inside me. I woke up at night thinking about ways to stop it, but nothing could. And no one else really helped, even when they were comforting me. They just told me to think about something else, and it would go away. That didn’t help. And I thought it was just because I wasn’t concentrating enough, but…now I don’t think so.”  
  
There. He had some control back by the end of that little speech, and he thought it was a good one, and it would make a neat segue into the next part of the interview, when he would talk about why he had turned to the Dark Arts.  
  
Which made it strange to catch the expression on Malfoy’s face out of the corner of his eye. He hid it in a moment, but he looked as he had done when Harry was refusing to take to Dark magic at all.   
  
Harry didn’t do it with an audience, but he wanted to glare at him. What was wrong? Hadn’t he made his appeal appealing enough? He would have to ask Malfoy later, after Skeeter had gone.  
  
For now, he settled for holding Skeeter’s eye and answering the next, inevitable, questions. Malfoy would just have to be weird on his own time.  
  
*  
  
Draco didn’t say anything, because what he would have said would be stupid, the result of impulse. He settled back in his seat and sipped at his tea instead, and let the Calming Draught he had mixed in take effect. He could resist it if he wanted to, partially because of his long training in Potions, but there was no reason to at the moment.  
  
Still.  
  
He hated waste. He hated stupidity that came not from ignorance but from willful misunderstanding of the situation at hand.  
  
Potter’s friends, and anyone else who told him to merely concentrate the snakes away, must have seen that their strategy was not working long before Potter got to the point where he was taken to St. Mungo’s. Why hadn’t they learned more about Parseltongue, and found another way to approach the problem?  
  
Draco knew the answer already. He had remarked on it to Pansy. Fear. The thick, choking, irrational dread that the Dark Arts inspired, the fear that meant research into them was seen as the same thing as openly practicing them. He understood what had driven Granger and Weasley. He understood everything.  
  
He did not have to like it. He did not have to avoid churning and seething at the thought that it might have ended in Potter’s permanent madness or suicide, if he had not chanced to overhear Potter and Weasley while they were on their way to hospital.  
  
But he had to be quiet for right now, while Potter worked to convince Skeeter that he was the charming victim of those misunderstandings, and charmed away those fears in the process.  
  
So he sat, and sipped his tea, and smiled blandly when Skeeter caught his eye. He knew that she probably wanted the story that had ended up with him at Potter’s side, but at the moment, the first “heartfelt” interview that Potter had ever given her was more important. So she faced Potter, and Draco sat there with a bland smile and exasperation in his heart.  
  
He would end up murdering someone from that exasperation, he knew. Someday.  
  
But it would have to be after the effort they were making now, which was to make Dark wizards look like tame and fluffy kittens instead of the hunting leopards that Draco knew and acknowledged they were.   
  
*  
  
“I think that went well,” Harry said, sprawling back over the cushions and closing his eyes. He thought for a moment, then pulled his legs up onto the couch, helped by the snakes that had appeared to twine around them. He had sent them away while he was speaking to Skeeter; it wouldn’t do to have her glimpse them and perhaps take fright, herself. Now they were back with a vengeance, wanting to assist him with everything and sniffing at Malfoy’s furniture with forked tongues in hopes, Harry thought, of telling him something new.  
  
“It did,” Malfoy said, and no more.  
  
Harry turned his head. They still occupied the small drawing room—well, small by comparison to some of the other rooms in the Manor; Harry thought it was larger than the entire ground floor of the Dursleys’ house—where they’d talked with Skeeter. Along one wall was a piano, which Harry hadn’t paid much attention to before, except to note that it was made of dark and polished wood. Malfoy sat on the bench in front of it, stroking his hands along the keys, producing random but musical falls of notes.  
  
Harry cocked his head. _The cold one is angry,_ whispered the white serpent.  
  
“What is it?” he asked.  
  
Malfoy turned around on the bench and sat regarding him for a moment. Then he exploded to his feet and crossed the distance between him and Harry in one of those sudden movements he had. Harry flinched despite himself. Malfoy leaned close enough to practically snarl in his face.  
  
“Have you _thought_ about how close you came to dying?” he whispered. “Either because of the Healers’ treatments, or because you would have committed suicide in despair? Or maybe someone in the Ministry would have taken fright and slain you as a Dark wizard? You acted as if you don’t _care_ that they threatened you.”  
  
Harry blinked. “I care,” he said finally. “But the ones I care the most about are Ron and Hermione, and I want to get them back, and I kind of understand why they did it. The others are just like the people who threatened me for not ending the war fast enough, or for killing Voldemort.” He didn’t think Malfoy flinched at the name, but he wondered if that was because Malfoy was holding himself rigidly in the grip of his anger right now, and no other motion could make it through his still body. “So that part isn’t new to me.”  
  
“You _should_ be more angry,” Malfoy said, and leaned closer to Harry than Harry wanted anyone except one of his serpents right now. The white snake hissed eagerly, but Harry refused its silent invitation to reach out and bite Malfoy on the nose so that he would withdraw, or let Harry use it like a whip on him.  
  
“Don’t you tell me what I should feel,” Harry hissed, feeling his fangs shine out again, and his cheeks swell with the venom. He still didn’t know what effect his poison had. He didn’t want to test it on Malfoy, but his resistance to the idea was weaker than it had been. “I don’t care. _Fuck_ you. I’m going to feel what I want, and if you’re not used to that idea, then you’re exactly the same as the rest of them.”  
  
Malfoy paused, but Harry didn’t think the hesitation came from fear. Instead, he was simply regrouping himself to attack from a new direction. If the anger hadn’t burned, Harry would have laughed. People called _him_ stubborn and addicted to getting his own way. That was because they had never seen Malfoy in action.  
  
“You’ve been betrayed and used so much by everyone that you no longer think of it that way,” Malfoy said, his voice low and soothing, “as something you deserve revenge for and _should_ have revenge for. But someone else, from the outside, can see it and take it for you.”  
  
Harry rose so fast that his vision swayed. Then he stalked closer to Malfoy, who widened his eyes but didn’t move away. The element of risk in his beloved Dark Arts apparently made him immune to the fact that he really should have _backed off,_ Harry thought.  
  
“I’ve been betrayed and used,” Harry said, right into Malfoy’s face. The white snake danced in excitement beside him. It was so loyal to him, Harry decided, that it would be happy to strike at anyone if it would aid Harry; it didn’t matter whether it had once approved of Malfoy or not. Harry was glad that he now controlled the snakes, and not the other way around. “But picking out random people to hurt will only convince them that I’m evil and chaotic. And we don’t want that. Remember?”  
  
Malfoy tilted his head to the side. “In your place, I would be screaming for vengeance.”  
  
“In my place, you would be so busy experimenting with the Parseltongue and what it could do that you wouldn’t have time for screaming,” Harry corrected him. “Honestly, _you_ should have been the Parselmouth, you’re so fascinated with it.”  
  
The white snake leaned against him and hissed in his ear, _Brother. Do you not want us?_ There was the slide of a heavy constrictor against Harry’s legs at the same moment, and the patterned kiss of vipers along his cheeks.  
  
 _I want you,_ Harry hissed back, and turned his head to caress the white snake’s neck with his cheek, while keeping a wary eye on Malfoy. _But I don’t want to let him tell me what to do. Just because he thinks Parseltongue is wonderful and my friends are horrible doesn’t make it true._  
  
The white snake paused as if turning that information around in its mind, and then flicked his ear. _Whatever you say is right, brother._  
  
Malfoy hadn’t answered his question. He simply sat with his hands folded between his knees and stared at Harry. Harry stared back. He wished that he had another place to go besides Malfoy Manor, and then he would walk out right now and never come back. Or at least not until Malfoy recovered his senses.  
  
*  
  
Draco hadn’t anticipated that Potter would argue with him so soon, when he was still feeling his way in shallow political waters and hadn’t even spent forty-eight hours outside the walls of St. Mungo’s.  
  
It was…quite wonderful.  
  
Draco could feel his senses sharpening, his skin opening up, the way that they never did except when he had opposition. Pansy provided him with arguments when it came to the future of the Dark Arts and her own specialty, but Draco otherwise dominated their conversations. Similar things happened with Blaise and Gregory and Millicent and the others he still had regular contact with from the old Hogwarts days.  
  
But he had grown wise on risks, on challenges that would throw him and bite him with worse than Potter’s poison if he faltered, and he hadn’t found those challenges in magic itself for some time. Creating things like the Net was now a matter of effort and investigation, not pure fear.  
  
He _needed_ the sharpness, he thought. Otherwise, he would be dull someday on the Dark paths, and the darkness would swallow him without fuss, without noise.  
  
He laughed instead of raging, and saw Potter’s stance flow and soften. Draco stood up and stalked a step forwards. Potter immediately tensed again and moved in a half-circle, his arm coming up. From there, the band of white encircling it would have a good way to strike at Draco, he knew.  
  
“You’re doing well in the interview,” Draco said. “And I think that you’ll help me convince the public that Dark Arts aren’t the evil and horrible thing that they always thought they were. And you’re mastering Parseltongue in a way that _does_ make me envious.” _And hard,_ he thought, though Potter might have missed the way Draco unsubtly jutted his hips forwards, his attention was so firmly fixed on Draco’s face. “But you have to think about it beyond that. What do you want from the Dark paths? What will drive you to walk them once you reconcile with your friends? What specialty will you make your own, beyond Parseltongue?”  
  
Potter crouched, and the white serpent drifted down his shoulder until it rested half on the crown of his head and half on his neck. Draco watched it, wishing that he could see the details of scale and face. Perhaps, the more time he spent around Potter and the more Potter looked on him as an ally, the more that would happen. That might make up for some of the sharpness going away.  
  
“I assumed that Parseltongue was the only Dark gift I needed,” Potter said at last. “And if I have my friends back and I’ve repaid you for the way you helped me, then why do I need to keep walking the Dark paths?”  
  
Draco clucked his tongue. “Do you need to see the Hanging Tree again?” he asked. “Walk on them, and you _can’t_ draw back. You don’t have to travel every path, and some people, like Pansy, prefer to master the same ones over and over rather than constantly striking out into the new—”  
  
“Let me guess,” Potter said, lifting his head. “You prefer the second way.”  
  
Draco ducked his head and fluttered his lashes. “Is it that obvious? Or do you like to keep me _under observation_?”  
  
The thickness in his voice made Potter stumble. Blue and red shimmers around his legs promptly anchored him, and he shuddered a little. “No,” he said. “Stop being stupid, Malfoy. I just meant that anyone could tell that about you from the way you talked. It’s the Auror training! That’s all it is!”  
  
Since that sounded like an argument Potter would have to have with himself, Draco wisely passed it over, and went on. “You have to keep walking them. You choose how to walk, but you can’t forsake them.”  
  
Potter clenched his hands. “If I’m strong enough in my magic, I should be able to.”  
  
Draco shrugged. “I can see from your thread in my Net that you’ve used more Dark magic than the Parseltongue. That was both a strength and a weakness; you’d used it, but you denied it so furiously, and used it so rarely, that you could still think of yourself as a Light wizard. Now you’ve taken Parseltongue willingly into your grasp, and accepted guidance on the paths. Worse, you stepped onto them of your own free will. _Will,_ Potter, is behind this, and you can’t take back a choice with another choice. You’ll be on them forever.”  
  
Potter flexed his arms in and out. The white serpent slid down to the level of his ear. Draco didn’t know what it was saying, and wished he could hear.  
  
Then he snorted. Even if he _could_ hear, he would never understand. Best to leave the serpent tongue to Potter. What he wanted to know, he would have to have a Parselmouth to tell him anyway. Draco doubted the magical snakes understood the core and the ground of their being.  
  
Then Potter said, “I knew that. But I didn’t want to face it.” Draco smiled, but Potter swung to face him. instead. “That doesn’t mean you get to dictate how I feel, either. I’ll reconcile with my friends and react to how the Ministry betrayed me in my own bloody way.”  
  
Draco spread his hands innocently. It was at least a good sign that Potter had used the word “betray” when speaking about the Ministry, he thought. “All right,” he said mildly. “That’s good to know. Now that I know it, I won’t irritate you with talking about what I think you should feel instead.”  
  
Potter stared at him, then narrowed his eyes. “Your specialty is information, right? The way that Parkinson’s specialty is finding and tracking spells.”  
  
Draco smiled, and extended his arms to the sides, while Potter’s words ran through him, warm as mulled wine. “Very good. What gave it away?”  
  
“I didn’t think of it until just now.” Potter looked at the white snake from the corner of his eye. “But the Net, and the way that you want to learn more about Parseltongue, and the way that you look when I’m explaining something…they all add up.”  
  
Draco nodded. “So. We have the first step done. I believe the second step is to set up a confrontation so that you can speak to your friends in a way you find comfortable. Which place and time would you suggest?”  
  
*  
  
Harry started. He’d thought he had Malfoy cornered, that he had the advantage for a moment because he knew something Malfoy hadn’t told him, and Malfoy wriggled out from underneath the hold and turned around again. If Malfoy was a snake, Harry thought, he would be a krait. Small and fast and able to _move._  
  
 _Brother, are you well?_ the white snake asked him, with a flick of a tongue like a cool drop of water on Harry’s cheek. _You smell too warm._  
  
Harry swallowed and said, “The Ministry is sitting on the news right now. Do you think they’ll move to force it out of Ron and Hermione if I talk to them?”  
  
“The Ministry knows only as much as they choose to tell it,” Malfoy said, and cocked his head wisely. His eyes burned for a moment, the way they had when he learned the truth about Harry’s feelings. “You’re thinking of two kinds of news here. There’s the news of your gift and your escape from St. Mungo’s, which the Ministry is keeping quiet right now, and the news of your being willing to speak with your friends. But Skeeter’s article will combine them, and no matter what the Ministry wants, I don’t think it can suppress _that_.”  
  
Harry flushed. He hadn’t remembered that Skeeter would probably publish before Ron and Hermione agreed to speak with him, no matter how soon he contacted them. “I’m not used to politics,” he muttered.  
  
“ _That_ is far more irritating than your propensity to forgive your enemies,” Malfoy said to the fireplace. “Your continual deriding of your own intelligence and strength, and your assumption that you cannot learn what you need to learn.”  
  
Harry stared at him. He was so used to hearing that he was reckless and arrogant and self-confident, mostly from other Aurors, that he hadn’t thought…  
  
 _That’s the problem, brother,_ the white snake whispered into his ear. _You aren’t thinking, and you_ must.  
  
Harry swallowed and nodded. “All right. I want to set up the confrontation at Parkinson’s house. I think they’ll be suspicious of her, but they won’t hate her as much as they hate you right now. And I don’t think they know about your friendship with her.”  
  
Malfoy smiled. “Good thinking,” he said, and Harry jolted a little at the pleasure that ran through him. “I’ll firecall Pansy, but _you_ speak with her. You need the practice at decision-making.”  
  
He turned away, and Harry waited for a moment before following him. He could feel the fangs withdrawing, the venom sacs shrinking.  
  
 _They are under my control. I can do this._  
  
He watched Malfoy’s back, and reflected on the way that he had both yelled at Malfoy and guessed his specialty without provoking a deadly fight either time.  
  
 _What else can I do? What else have I thought is beyond my ability that actually isn’t?_  
  
He was aware, from the corner of his eye, of the white snake dancing happily on his shoulder.


	11. Cold-Blooded

  
Draco settled into a corner of Pansy’s favorite drawing room and considered the refreshments available on a sideboard. There was golden wine there, and plain pumpkin juice, and butterbeer, and Firewhisky, and milk, and a dozen other things, including Strength Potions, that Draco thought she had included as jokes. Well, he didn’t mind drinking a potion he hadn’t had to brew himself, as long as it came from someone he trusted. He tossed back one of the Strength Potions, grey and bubbling, and then picked up a glass of pumpkin juice. Drinking alcohol now wouldn’t be a good plan.  
  
“You know that it’s a stupid idea for you to be here.”  
  
Draco turned around and lifted his glass to Pansy. “That’s what I love best about you, Pansy, your never-failing sense of diplomacy and tact.”  
  
Pansy shook her head and put her hands on her hips. “Why not leave Potter to confront his friends alone?” she suggested, less than gently. “You know that he’s going to stumble anyway. Your presence will make it worse.”  
  
Draco smiled at her with a show of teeth. “Potter is my investment. And it’s fine if he stumbles. I just don’t want him falling _off_ the paths. He said something yesterday that made me think he would,” he added, when Pansy blinked at him.  
  
“Did he?” Pansy turned to look thoughtfully through the arched doorway into the corridor where Potter waited. Draco had finally asked him to go out there because Potter wanted to pace, and he was driving Draco to distraction in the shorter drawing room. “Well, I wouldn’t have expected that. Or perhaps I would have. It’s not easy for someone to go from thinking of himself as a Light wizard to embracing the Dark.”  
  
Draco nodded and sipped again at his juice. It was perfect, of course, chilled just so and a bright shade of orange that reminded Draco of autumn foliage. People like Granger who thought wizards could simply dispense with the services of house-elves didn’t know what they were missing. “I think he understands, now, that this is a permanent commitment. But his friends have always had too much influence on him. If anyone could make him renounce that commitment…”  
  
Pansy rolled her eyes. “I see. Well. Now that the article is out there, I can understand why you feel that investment.”  
  
Draco smiled. The post had poured in that morning, and his house-elves had sorted it out into “obviously dangerous,” “worth amusement,” and “worth reading” piles for him. In the last were letters from Dark wizards who were glad that someone had finally come forwards to represent them as they should be represented, furious questions from important political figures, and letters from Potter’s personal friends. He had spent a long time listening to Howlers explode in warded rooms, rooms that would both prevent them from getting out to blow up in Draco’s face and record the information they spouted for later listening. If there was anything interesting in there, Draco would find it.  
  
“You love being the center of attention,” Pansy said, and toasted him with her own glass of wine. “I have to accept that you can handle it and I can’t. This is as closely as I want to be involved in the Potter end of things.”  
  
Draco smiled. “And if Granger and Weasley don’t keep their mouths shut about meeting Potter at your house?”  
  
Pansy sighed. “Well, if I _must_ go public, I will.”  
  
Draco nodded. Pansy enjoyed the stares as much as he did, but she enjoyed her little show of modesty even more. Draco blamed her mother. “What time are the Terrible Twins scheduled to arrive?”  
  
“At two,” Pansy said, nodding at the golden clock on the wall, which still showed ten minutes until the appointment. Then she smiled and looked towards the grumbling fireplace. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s them,” she added, and stepped over to open the Floo, bending down in a long, graceful line.  
  
Draco turned and softly called Potter, who was passing by the door just then. Potter spun around on one heel, his arms lifted and his hand braced as if he was about to fling magic.  
  
“It’s all right,” Draco said. “Your friends aren’t here yet, but they’re coming. I thought you might want to come in and arrange yourself. Choose how they’re first going to see you,” he added, because Potter was staring at him as if he didn’t know what Draco meant.  
  
*  
  
Harry closed his eyes and felt the sweat drying on the back of his neck, touched a moment later by the white serpent’s tongue as it licked him clean. He nodded.  
  
“I’ll come in,” he said.  
  
Malfoy remained, studying him, where Ron or Hermione would have known him well enough to enact a discreet withdrawal. Another reminder that he wasn’t with his best friends, Harry thought, and never would be anymore. He drove his fingers into his palms and stood there, swaying and sweating.  
  
He had bound Hermione. He had let Malfoy attack Ron. How was he ever going to face them again?  
  
But the white serpent said softly, into his ear, _Brother. That is what the cold one spoke of the other day. You know that you need not blame yourself for something so much that it paralyzes you. You cannot apologize if you remain out here. You cannot act. You cannot defend yourself. You cannot do anything but stand still. And that is the part of a bird or a rabbit, not a snake._  
  
 _Sometimes I think it would be easier if I was commanding birds or rabbits,_ Harry told the white serpent in subvocal Parseltongue. _Then no one would be so quick to accuse me of evil._  
  
 _Rabbits do not have venom,_ said the serpent in some surprise.  
  
Harry laughed in spite of himself, and held out his hand so that the snake could touch the tips of his fingers with its tongue.  
  
“Yes, just the thing to reassure Granger and Weasley,” Malfoy’s voice drawled from perhaps a meter away, closer than he had come yet. “Laughing in response to things no one else can hear, reaching out to touch things no one else can feel.”  
  
Harry opened his eyes and glared. Malfoy looked back at him with his brows raised, then nodded towards the drawing room that had felt too confining to Harry earlier when Parkinson was trying to make him sit down on one of the fine sofas that seemed to be covered in deep blue or green brocade. On the other hand, what did he know about brocade?  
  
“I’m giving you good advice,” Malfoy said, so softly that Harry knew no one in the room behind him would hear him. “You know that. You want to resist it, because it’s not the kind of thing that your friends would say. But if you’ll excuse me, your friends have the political awareness of a flea. A _young_ flea.”  
  
“Hermione’s worked in politics since the war,” Harry snapped, feeling his defensiveness fill his belly like swelling blood. “You have no right to say that she would always give me bad advice.”  
  
“Because what she wanted you to do with the Parseltongue was so astute.”  
  
Harry found that he had opened his mouth. He shut it again and swallowed. It always came back to that, to the snakes on his shoulder and the venom sacs under his cheeks and the band of scales that he had found it was more comfortable to simply let form under his hairline. His friends wouldn’t see him as the same person anymore. He _wasn’t_ the same person anymore. He had walked the Dark paths. Seen the Hanging Tree.  
  
Accepted help from Malfoy and Parkinson.  
  
“Let’s go,” he said abruptly, and stepped past Malfoy. But on the way, he let his hand sway out and brush Malfoy’s.  
  
Malfoy smiled at his back, he knew it. And if Harry didn’t want to think about when he had learned to read the git’s thoughts so well, no one was saying that he had to.   
  
*  
  
Draco followed Potter into the drawing room with a lighter step. Potter was struggling, but the struggles tended in other directions now. He didn’t want to defend his friends so much that he would drop his snakes for them.  
  
 _He shouldn’t have to change what he is to keep a friendship. Perhaps to survive in a political world or conciliate his enemies, but his friends are supposed to be the ones who understand and encourage him._  
  
That made Draco part his lips in soundless laughter. By that standard, he thought he was the best friend that Potter had at the moment—or the best one who walked on two legs.  
  
Caught in that quicksilver amusement, he was able to nod amicably in response to Weasel’s glare of a greeting. Granger stood beside him, her arm around his waist and her hand on her wand. Draco raised his eyebrows at them. _How wonderful a way to greet your best friend._  
  
He wondered if he should talk about his definition of friendship, if it would amuse them. But he was _supposed_ to be supporting Potter right now, and it would be stupid to undermine his own efforts. He stood back with his hands clasped in front of him and resolved to say nothing except in response to a direct question.  
  
Or if they really seemed as if they would undermine Potter’s commitment. Draco had already seen enough Dark wizards who cringed back from the risks involved die in writhing pain, thanks.  
  
Potter came to a stop in front of the pair. He swallowed and held his hands out to the sides as if he wanted to show that he didn’t have hold of a wand. Draco shook his head. _They know you’re dangerous without that. They’ve absorbed that fact better than you have, I think. You’re cautious, you’re demonized, but you’re also powerful.  
  
You never made proper use of your power. I’m going to be here to ensure that you can._  
  
Potter said nothing. Weasel and Granger said nothing. Draco expected Pansy to shift and cough to break the silence, but she stood back along the wall and seemed to have decided that the scene required no words from her at all.  
  
Finally, Potter said, “Ron. Hermione.” His voice was choked. The streamer of white light on his shoulder rose up and curled into his hair. Draco didn’t know if Weasel and Granger had tensed because they saw and understood the movement, or if it was just hearing the strangled hoarseness of Potter’s voice. “I—I missed you.” His voice cracked in the middle this time.  
  
 _Probably the best thing he could say. Honest emotion usually works with Gryffindors._  
  
But this time, Potter was up against that paralyzing fear of the Dark Arts that had risen to a new height since the war. Granger tightened her arm on Weasel. He was the one who finally answered, sounding more strangled than Potter, as if he had the _right._ Well, perhaps his wife was squeezing the air out of him, Draco thought charitably, and had a nice little fantasy where he replaced Granger’s arm with one of Potter’s boas.  
  
“Why did you run, mate?” Weasel whispered. “You know that the Healers were only trying to do their best for you.”  
  
Potter hesitated, then stood tall. “They told me, when I asked, that I would only end up mad or a suicide, because the Parseltongue started up so late in my life,” he said flatly. “I didn’t want that to happen. By becoming a Dark wizard, I can _see_ again. Not to mention walk and eat and not have to worry about dying.”  
  
“But you have to worry about what you’ll become.” Weasel’s eyes were on fire. “There are worse things in _that_ line than dying.”  
  
But Potter had said the right thing for Granger, anyway. “A Healer _told_ you that?” she asked, sounding appalled. “But they’ve rescued some Parselmouths in the past, I know that! Why couldn’t they help you?”  
  
Draco smiled. _Excellent. She has shifted to thinking of it as the Healers’ fault, and not Potter’s. That will help.  
_  
“They said that sometimes that happened, but it was very rare,” Potter said. The white serpent on his shoulder flowed down and coiled around his arm. As long as it didn’t move much, Draco thought it might escape the Gryffindors’ observation. “Only about five percent of Parselmouths managed it.” Draco watched Granger’s jaw tighten in that expression she’d worn at school right before she began a speech about the rights of abused house-elves. “And I don’t like my chances for being in that five percent.”  
  
“Mate.” Weasley was pacing back and forth now, maybe because Granger had withdrawn from him into the silent realm of moral championing. Then he flung himself back around and stared at Potter. “How could you bind her? How could you send _Malfoy_ to fight me?” He gave Draco a look of active hatred. Draco smiled back, not having expected anything else since he had managed to escape. Weasley apparently looked at Potter again to keep from spilling blood on Pansy’s nice clean floor, which Draco appreciated. “How—how could you do that? That’s the thing I don’t understand. If you didn’t want to go to St. Mungo’s, fine, but what about _us_? That’s what really convinced us you were a Dark wizard, you know. _Not_ the newspaper articles. That you fought us.”  
  
Draco picked up his eyebrows. Well. Potter’s answer to those questions would determine what way the conversation would go. Since there was profit in it for Draco either way, he settled back and waited.  
  
*  
  
Harry waited for the hot sensation in his lungs that had happened whenever he thought of his friends over the last few days, and the blush of shame on his face.  
  
It didn’t come. Instead, the white serpent said in a lazy, considering voice, _You can keep silence, I suppose. But I would not advise it, brother._  
  
The white serpent wasn’t upset, because _Harry_ wasn’t upset. Not the way he thought he should be, by the way Ron had phrased the questions, and the way that Ron and Hermione were probably anticipating.  
  
Without that shame to trip him up and make him defensive, Harry found himself speaking with a calm air that seemed to drain some of the color from Ron’s face. “I wanted out. And I did ask not to go to St. Mungo’s, but you told me it was time. If I’d kept protesting, would you have let me stay in the Ministry, Ron?”  
  
Ron visibly flinched and touched his forehead. “No,” he said at last. “Not after the way that your snakes attacked Kipling. Sorry, but no.” He flicked a mute glance at Hermione, and Harry knew he was waiting for her to speak up, too. But she was involved in considerations that Harry couldn’t follow, from the way her lips moved. She wouldn’t take part in the conversation again until she had finished thinking it through.  
  
“Well, then,” Harry said. “I wanted to do something, and I couldn’t trust you to think that I knew what was best for me. So I did what I had to, and ran. I’m sorry,” he added, when Ron squinted at him. “But it was impossible to stay. You weren’t listening to me, and the Healers had admitted they didn’t know what to do with me. Malfoy was the only one who seemed to offer a solution.”  
  
“What made you listen to _him_?” Ron spun to face Malfoy this time, and clenched his fists. Harry was secretly impressed that he refrained from hitting him, though. That was another sign that made him think Ron really did care more about winning Harry back than pounding Malfoy for being evil. “When you didn’t trust the Healers and you didn’t trust us, it seemed like a great idea to trust someone you’d always hated?”  
  
“Because he was the one who had answers,” Harry said simply. “The one who made me see something other than snakes and reversed some of the physical changes when he touched me.”  
  
“Physical changes,” Hermione whispered, and leaned forwards. “What kind?”  
  
Harry hesitated, because he had only hinted at them in the interview with Skeeter. He thought Malfoy was right that revealing them too soon would dim the public’s sympathy for him.  
  
But these were his friends, and he wanted them back, and he thought he was doing a pretty good job so far. He let the fangs grow, and relaxed the concentration that he had found would keep the venom sacs from forming in his cheeks. When he drew in his breath, it came out in a hiss, though a meaningless one, or the snakes wrapped about him would have stirred.  
  
Ron flinched and looked nauseated. Hermione’s eyes brimmed with tears. Harry tensed, and the white serpent lifted its head, but said nothing, only fixing unblinking ice-colored eyes on Ron. It thought him the greater danger, then.  
  
 _Well. That was their first reaction. It doesn’t mean it’s their only one._ Harry bore down with his mind in the way that he had found worked best, and the fangs shortened and thickened, becoming his front teeth once more. It was harder to squeeze the venom sacs down; Harry had found that any changes his body made under the surface of the skin were more difficult, in general. He had only managed to get all the shadows of scale patterns on his hands to go away after an hour of focus.  
  
But this was the way he was, now, and if he could choose how he looked, he didn’t want to maintain a mask in front of his best friends. He looked them in the eye and asked, “Well? Are you going to accept me? Or are you going to walk away?”  
  
*  
  
 _A good question,_ Draco thought, and wrapped his hand around his wand. He could see Pansy doing the same thing from the corner of his eye. They would allow Weasley and Granger to leave, but it wouldn’t be with intact memories. An Auror and a political fighter had no _need_ to remember the Floo address for a Slytherin’s house.  
  
Weasley did some fast breathing, the kind a bull did when about to charge. Draco had to admit that he couldn’t read the bloke well, though, not always, and if Potter and his snakes weren’t alarmed, Draco could simply remain alert and watchful.  
  
“What kind of life are you going to _have_ , as a Dark wizard?” Weasley burst out at last. “Hunted down, killed, maybe even tortured by other Dark wizards who want to learn your secrets? I don’t see why you _want_ it, mate.”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes, and didn’t care who saw. There was stubbornness and clinging to outmoded beliefs, and then there was ignoring what Potter had already told him several times.  
  
“It’s this or die,” Potter said flatly. “Maybe even hurt more people than I would as a Dark wizard, since my power would be flailing around out of control, and I couldn’t hold back the snakes or stop from changing into one. You know, the way it started to happen before I accepted the gift and controlled it.”  
  
“You’re capable of control now?” Granger whispered.  
  
Potter turned to face her, and nodded. Draco cocked his head. _Interesting. Their friendship is close, but he seems calmer with her than he does with Weasley. Perhaps it is not as emotional._ “Yes. I can hold back the snakes from attacking or make them attack, conjure them or dismiss them. And watch _this_.” He shut his eyes, and Draco felt the faint tingle of Dark magic extending over his hands. The fingers shrank, and scales blossomed under the skin. Then his arms started to move back in towards the sides.  
  
Weasley fell back from him, groping frantically for his wand in the way of someone not able to look away from a horrifying sight. Granger squeaked and pressed her fist to her mouth. Draco shifted and crossed his legs, wondering at their reaction.   
  
_So it doesn’t make Weasley hard. So that’s less competition._  
  
Potter paused, and the scales retracted at the same moment as his arms began to move outwards. His fingers unfolded from his hands like claws coming unsheathed. He lifted his hand and stroked the white serpent on his shoulder as though to prove that he could, but his eyes never moved from his friends.  
  
Weasley shut his mouth. Granger took her fist away from hers and said, “So the changes are making you into a magical creature?”  
  
“No,” Potter said, impatient for the first time, where Draco would have been advising them to find their wands and depart long since. “I can control them. They don’t control me. I don’t have to look the same all the time. I’m a _Parselmouth,_ Hermione, and that’s different from a magical creature and different from just a Dark wizard.” His eyes flicked to the side as though searching for reassurance in Draco’s face.  
  
Draco remained silent, as he had promised he would, but he let his eyes light up and his head incline like one swinging on a rope. Potter promptly tipped up his chin and went back to studying his friends.  
  
“You’re still trusting him,” Weasley said.  
  
“You’re still in danger,” Granger whispered.  
  
“But not for the same reasons that you thought I was,” Potter said, and moved a hand down in front of him as though wielding a guillotine between past and present. “That’s what you have to accept. That it’s _not_ the same. It can’t be, after that article I did. So are you going to accept the way I am? Or not?”  
  
Weasley and Granger exchanged agonized glances. Draco had seen that kind of agony before, and smiled. They were listening to the overturning and shattering of their precious prejudices. He had been through the same thing himself, numerous times, but he had fought his way through to reality on his own. They had Potter helping them, softening every step of the way for them, and still they couldn’t accept what was happening. They didn’t deserve even this much help.  
  
“We’ll have to think,” Granger whispered. Draco suspected that she had started to relate to Potter as she would to some threatened species of magical creature, and now she had to stop and consider.  
  
“We’ll have to,” Weasley said, hollowly. He looked directly at the white serpent on Potter’s shoulder, a darting, flickering glance, and then turned his head away.  
  
Potter bit his lip, then nodded. “That’s all I ask you to do,” he said, and turned his back to cross the room to Draco.  
  
“Harry!” That was Weasley, lunging forwards with his hand stretched out. “Aren’t you going to come with us? I mean—you’re not going to stay here, you _can’t_ —”  
  
His voice trailed off as Potter looked at him.  
  
“Yes,” Potter said, while the world grew deep and silent except for the faint hiss of aroused snakes on the edge of Draco’s hearing, “I can.”  
  
And he came back to Draco and Pansy, while Weasley and Granger departed through the Floo after a few more moments of appealing to his back.  
  
Potter closed his eyes when he reached Draco and leaned his shoulder against the mantelpiece. He was shaking lightly. Draco touched his shoulder, and he crouched, fangs and venom sacs flashing into being so suddenly that Draco thought they must have hurt him.  
  
“You did well,” Draco said. “And you need your friends.”  
  
“You think that?” Potter stared at him.  
  
Draco sighed. “I know my allies’ needs and strengths and weaknesses. Yes, I know you need them, and because of that, I won’t interfere.”  
  
Potter continued to look at him, green-eyed and bright. Fanged. Dark.  
  
Irresistible.  
  
Draco leaned down and kissed him, cutting his lips on the fangs, turning his head from side to side in the hope that he might catch a drop of sweet, delicious venom.


	12. Always a Serpent

  
Harry stood there with his hands clenched, and his mind riding his fingers, digging into his skin at the same moment as Malfoy’s mouth dug into his. He didn’t know how to break away, whether Malfoy was claiming this as part of his price for extracting Harry from hospital—  
  
And then Harry flinched, and danced backwards.   
  
_I don’t care if it_ is _part of the bloody price, I don’t have to stand here and put up with it!_  
  
Malfoy didn’t look discouraged. He smiled at Harry instead, and held out a hand. “That was going wonderfully,” he said, voice as breathy as a drifting spiderweb. “Would you care to resume?”  
  
“No,” Harry said, more upset at the taste lingering in his mouth than at Malfoy’s words. “How could you _do_ something like that? How could you think that I wanted it?” He touched the side of his lips, and found that his venom sacs hadn’t swelled, and the fangs hadn’t extended any further than they usually did.   
  
That gave him pause.  
  
“I could do it because I’m hard, and because there’s the chance that you might want it, too,” Malfoy said, and then waited, his eyes on Harry and all the brighter, or all the darker, Harry thought, because of what he had just voiced.  
  
Harry’s hand dropped away from his fangs as he stared at Malfoy. “So you didn’t know I did?” he asked. If pressed before this, he would have guessed that Malfoy would kiss him only because he thought Harry wanted him back. He was proud. Surely Malfoy and pure-blood pride couldn’t tolerate kissing someone unless he was sure that the kiss would be welcome?  
  
But Malfoy smiled at him, and an invisible fire seemed to surge and dance around him, and Harry remembered that this Malfoy had changed, not least by becoming a Dark wizard.  
  
“The Dark takes risks,” Malfoy whispered. “Does it please you, to know that Gryffindor House was right about that all along? You can’t stay _safe._ That was the hardest lesson to learn once I decided that I wanted to pursue the Dark Arts instead of sitting at home behind wards for the rest of my life. You can gain great power, but you never know beforehand what you might stumble into, or what might hurt you.”  
  
Harry shook his head, bewildered beyond endurance. “So kissing me was the kind of risk that you took, even though you knew it might anger me?”  
  
Malfoy smiled at him, and didn’t bother to nod.  
  
“Even though you knew that it might anger me enough to poison you?” That was the part Harry really didn’t understand. There was no way that Malfoy could miss the way he shook after meeting Ron and Hermione, and there was no way that he could miss the defensive snake-parts Harry had called into being just now.  
  
The old Malfoy would have thought that was the best time to take advantage of Harry, when he was shaky. But this new one had other motives. Harry wondered now if he was only faltering before the rich, bizarre incomprehensibility of them.  
  
“I wanted to taste the poison,” Malfoy whispered, and extended his hand further, as if yearning forwards from the lip of a cliff. “I think you can control it, the way that you can control the other ways you shapeshift. You could keep from hurting me if you wanted to, if you were careful.”  
  
“You don’t know that,” Harry said. He stood on the cliff, too, and the high air, or something else, was hurting his lungs. “You don’t even know what effect my poison has yet.”  
  
Malfoy smiled.  
  
 _Crazy. Mental. Are all Dark wizards that mental?_  
  
It was a life that made Harry wince as he thought about it. Continually plunging into darkness, never sure if there was going to be something at the bottom to catch them, trusting to luck or fate or whatever the Dark wizards would say was guiding them on the paths—  
  
 _Power. Malfoy would say that it was power._  
  
 _But he also said that you could never be entirely safe._  
  
So that discussion was settled, and it still left what had been between them before, Harry abruptly realized. Malfoy still stood there and smiled at him, and Harry knew that he wouldn’t back off and consent to pretend this had never happened, which was the way that Harry had handled some awkward kisses before.  
  
Facing the truth. That was probably another of the Dark wizards’ tricks. And Malfoy had said at some point that the Dark wizard’s greatest enemy was himself, hadn’t he? That meant that flinching or backing away from the truth was foolish. Because the truth was what would enable you to know yourself?  
  
Harry took in a deep breath. The white serpent touched his cheek again, and reminded Harry that there was some support he could never lose, whether or not he ever became friends with Ron and Hermione in the exact same way again, whether he and Malfoy were allies or lovers or even friends.  
  
“I…you didn’t ask me,” he said.  
  
Malfoy swept him a courtly bow, and came up grinning like a wolf. “Then may I have the honor of this kiss, Your Highness?”  
  
Harry flushed, and glared at him. “I didn’t mean like _that_ , either,” he snapped.  
  
“Didn’t you?” Malfoy’s eyes were lidded, his smile deep as a flush, and he came a step nearer in a way that made Harry want to match him instead of back away. “Well. I find that I want to take it that way. If your only objection is that I didn’t ask you, now you know I want to kiss you.” He bobbed to a stop again and watched Harry with those lidded eyes that made Harry mad. He wanted to shake Malfoy and spill all the secrets out of his clutching mouth, his grasping hands.  
  
 _Then I want—_  
  
Harry acted before his nerve broke. Although he thought Malfoy would finally back away when the fangs cut his lips, nevertheless Harry leaned forwards, and kissed him back.  
  
For the experiment. For the exhilarating sensation, the knowledge that someone wanted him for the way he looked, which would have repulsed so many ordinary people. For the long fall, and what awaited at the bottom.  
  
For the chance of what could come of it.  
  
*  
  
Draco knew his breath was panting out in sighs. He knew that he swayed like a reed as Potter manhandled him back towards the wall. He knew that Pansy had slipped discreetly out of the room, probably around the time that he first kissed Potter, and that she would tease him later.  
  
But he knew all that with the part of his mind that always hovered back at first, caught in the nets of caution, when he was starting a new experimental potion. That wasn’t the deepest or the best part of him, not the part that tangled with Potter now and tasted his fangs and smelled the poison on his breath.  
  
And Dark wizards couldn’t survive divided, with part of them holding back and insisting that it was stupid to commit themselves to something like this. Of course they _had_ to commit, and soar.  
  
So Draco snapped the cords holding himself to the rational part of his brain, and fell.  
  
The starry abyss whirled and twinkled around him. Draco would see some new part of the Dark paths for this, he was sure, and he wondered which for a moment.  
  
That moment became _this_ one, the one where Potter held him still against the wall and turned his head, scraping his left fang down Draco’s right cheek. Draco tensed and breathed and stilled, and his body surged to follow it. He’d been hard for long minutes, watching Potter. Now his body was joined, erection connected directly to face.  
  
“That’s what you wanted?” Potter sounded hushed, incredulous, ducking his head again as though he couldn’t believe something so simple would satisfy Draco. “You want…” He let it fade, and this time turned his head to cut Draco’s cheek open.  
  
Draco might have warned Potter to be careful with the venom and try to concentrate it down to harmlessness if he was thinking straight, but he wasn’t thinking straight, and it was _wonderful._ His head tilted back, his throat spasmed, and he came with the tingle of cold sweetness in the wound on his cheek and the arch of danger in his body, as images of what that cold could do cascaded through his brain.  
  
All was one: his muscles, his mind, his magic. He felt the touch of dark dirt on the paths beneath his fingers for a moment, and a flower-scented chill like the poison in his nostrils. He turned his head and kissed Harry, for causing this, causing such a magnificent fall.  
  
Harry swallowed, and the scent and sound of his confusion was very present in Draco’s nostrils. Then he stepped back, and stood there with his eyes raking Draco’s body. Draco looked back, and smiled to see that Harry’s pupils had gone slit again. He thought that was a sign of comfort, of Harry relaxing enough not to conceal who and what he was.  
  
“You wanted that,” Harry said, voice lower, the voice of someone landing on a Dark path, turning in an unexpected direction, and accustoming himself to the idea.  
  
“Yes,” Draco said. He reached back and tangled his fingers in his own hair, pulling it forwards around his shoulders so that it hung limp and loose. Blaise had always said that made him look fantastic. From the way Harry stared at him, it was fantastic in another way, seeing Draco make himself look messy for someone. “And now I’m going to do you the courtesy of asking you the question that I didn’t ask earlier. What do _you_ want?”  
  
*  
  
Harry’s blood thrummed. This felt so wild, so twisting, so new that he didn’t know if he could find the words for it.  
  
But the white serpent hissed in his ear, below the level of understanding, and Harry knew what he wanted. He couldn’t have explained it. He didn’t need to, though, not when Malfoy had come from the touch of his poison.  
  
He closed his eyes and left the shape of his hands flow and mold the way he had when he was showing Ron and Hermione the extent of his control. They warped and sighed and bent, and then he had hands still, but short and stubby, with scales in bands of gold and black shining through the skin.  
  
“Show me how much you like them,” he said, and extended them to Malfoy.  
  
The world felt dizzy around him as Malfoy looked at him with wide eyes, and Harry’s cheeks burned, and he started to wake from his trance. He had probably gone too far, and any minute Malfoy would kick him out the door in disgust, or Parkinson would come back—oh, God, he had forgotten they were standing in _her_ drawing room, she might still be there staring at them—  
  
Then Malfoy slid forwards in a dash that ended up with him on his knees at Harry’s feet, and took Harry’s hands between his own, still staring at him with eyes that, Harry realized, sparked with the reflection of literal stars. Harry swallowed. He had no doubt that he was looking at one of the Dark paths through Malfoy.  
  
“Of course,” Malfoy whispered, and licked down two of Harry’s fingers at once, their slenderness more responsible for that than the length of his tongue.  
  
Harry groaned and tilted his head back. The scales were sensitive and new, throbbing like sunburned skin in response to the licking. He crossed his legs and sank against something that might have been a wall or a couch. All he knew was that it supported him, and Malfoy followed wherever he went, sucking almost Harry’s whole hand into his mouth now, his eyes closed as his throat worked.  
  
Harry stared at him and wondered what was going through his head, if he was ashamed of what he was doing, if he didn’t care, if he would look up and laugh if Harry told him what Malfoy was doing to him—  
  
The throbbing in his fingers grew worse. The throbbing in his groin increased in time to it, and his heartbeat did much the same thing. Harry gave a hoarse cry that he knew had a hint of a hiss in it, and the next moment he came, as intense a surrender and a conquest as any he’d had in his life.  
  
Underneath the usual pleasurable, satiated feeling crawled a hope, a hint, a suspicion, that the next time would be intense, and the next time after that.  
  
If he was with someone who could see his snake-like features and value them, as Malfoy did.  
  
Harry turned his head. His fingers had grown out again, the nails that had almost sunk into the skin rounding, but the scales still glowed beneath the skin. Malfoy was touching them with delicate, fluttering fingertips, and he stared at them rather than into Harry’s eyes even when Harry coughed.  
  
Then he raised his head by slow degrees until their gazes met again, and Harry flushed red as a sunset at the smile in the back of those glinting grey eyes.  
  
“Now that we’ve settled this side of our alliance,” Malfoy said casually, standing up and draping himself against the back of the couch on which Harry had settled to kiss him, “should we find Pansy and plot out what we’re going to do next?”  
  
*  
  
Pansy gave Draco a look as they walked out of the drawing room, after Harry had spent an absurdly long time fussing with his hair and casting Cleaning Charms on his clothes. Draco could have assured him there was no speck of white left on the cloth, but Harry said something about _feeling_ dirty no matter what lay there. Draco had rolled his eyes and allowed him his inhibitions. Someone on his first steps down the Dark paths would still have them.  
  
By the look Pansy gave him, she thought it would have been nice if _Draco_ had had some.  
  
Draco shrugged at her and rolled his shoulders to feel the pressure of Harry’s grip on them, then reached up to trace the healing cuts on his cheeks. He had taken a risk, and he might gain nothing from it, or gain only far in the future, or suffer setbacks in the immediate future. But risk and chance and danger were all part of the Dark Arts.  
  
And in the meantime, he had enjoyed himself.   
  
“You have your friends back, I think,” Pansy told Harry, in the brisk tone she used whenever someone had done something that she considered unwise but which was none of her business. “They wanted to be back with you, and someone willing to be convinced always does half the work for you.”  
  
Harry blinked at her. Draco knew that Pansy wasn’t as fascinated with the slit pupils and deepened color of his eyes as Draco was, but he didn’t know why. For that matter, he didn’t understand why Harry didn’t spend hours every day in front of a mirror.  
  
“You think they were willing to be convinced?” Harry asked. “They seemed pretty resistant to me.”  
  
Pansy gave him a faint smile, and shot Draco another look behind Harry’s back. Draco flipped a hand at her, trying to convey the message: they could afford the time to indulge Harry as he needed to be indulged, because he would be such a powerful ally to them in the times to come. Scare him away now, and they would lose him.  
  
Sigh checked, Pansy told Harry, “There are people who hate the Dark Arts so much they would have immediately cursed their friends. But yours love you more than they hate Dark magic. It’s an excellent sign that they listened to you for as long as they did.”  
  
Harry nodded and sat up. “But that won’t apply to other people, like most of them who read the article. What do we do with them? How do we keep them from lashing out before they understand everything?”  
  
Draco, accustomed to the slightest changes of emotion and expression on Pansy’s face, knew that she was running through the full range with Harry. Her eyebrows elevated a nanometer, and then she nodded to herself, and then she smiled.  
  
“I don’t know,” she said. “This is your campaign, or more precisely the one of the man who recruited you.” She tilted her head at Draco.  
  
Harry turned around. Perhaps sex gave him a power boost, Draco thought. His fangs and his eyes and the new scales shimmering on his hands and arms literally glowed with inner light, and he was licking at his fangs as though to absorb the drops of poison from them before they fell. The white snake was wrapped around his throat so many times that it looked like a strand of ivy on a tree. Draco squinted, and congratulated himself when he thought he made out the sharp gold of gilding running through the snake. That might not be the way it really looked, but it was a change from a few hours ago.  
  
“What do you want?” Harry asked him. “People to accept you? People to accept Parseltongue? Or the Dark Arts?”  
  
“Why reach for any ambition so small?” Draco murmured, and smiled when Harry glared at him. “I want all of those things, of course.”  
  
Harry blinked at him, then snorted and shook his head. “I feel as though I’m falling off a cliff, but I keep falling into winds that buoy me up before I can hit the ground,” he said. “Is being a Slytherin like that?”  
  
“Being a Slytherin who studies the Dark Arts is like that,” Pansy said, and gave Harry the first genuine smile Draco had seen from her in a month. “You can’t bear us company in the first quality, of course, but the lack of the other can be made up.”  
  
Harry hesitated, then shook his head. “Yes, of course. So do you have a plan, Malfoy, or should I come up with one?”  
  
“I think you should tell us what you were about to say,” Draco said, and leaned forwards and parted his lips slightly, to see what effect the inside of his mouth might have in persuading Harry. It won him a deep crimson flush that made his eyes and fangs shine all the merrier, before the inevitable scowl descended.  
  
“How do you _do_ that?” Harry demanded.  
  
Draco wouldn’t pretend not to know what he was talking about; that was a fun kind of teasing in its place, but they had passed through that stage of their alliance by now. He waited until some moments had stretched past, however. He could make sensible decisions and still show a bit of dramatic flair. “It’s a gift you develop,” he said. “I could see that you already have some of it, the way you read their friends and their reactions.”  
  
Harry nodded. “And you’ve read enough about Parselmouths to know?”  
  
“I know _you_ ,” Draco said softly, wondering. “Did you never think yourself important enough at Hogwarts for your enemies to watch you? And you needn’t think that you’re going to get out of saying what you were going to say.”  
  
Harry hesitated one more time, and even Pansy leaned forwards a little. Then he shrugged with his hands more than his shoulders. “The Sorting Hat told me I could be great if I wanted to go to Slytherin.”  
  
Draco stood there with a fountain of emotions showering through him; Pansy burst out laughing and stood up from her couch, walking towards Harry with her hand out.  
  
Harry whipped around to face her and hissed, the poison on his fangs turning green where it had been clear. The white snake unwrapped two coils that it extended towards Pansy.  
  
Pansy stopped, but bowed to him. “You misunderstood the reason for my laughter,” she said, keeping her hand out but dropping her voice low. Draco, could he have moved in that moment, would have applauded her. “It makes things all the better, and makes me trust you in a way that would be hard for me otherwise. Welcome, brother.” And she clasped Harry’s short-fingered, scaly hand without hesitation, pumped it once, and let go, turning him towards Draco in the same motion. “Look at the expression on _his_ face.”  
  
Draco smiled at Harry with the clear joy streaming through him like the light of falling stars, and said, “This is _wonderful._ ”  
  
*  
  
 _When was the last time that I saw someone so enthusiastic about something?_  
  
That was hard for Harry to really remember. There was a certain rhythm to Auror work that took over after a while, and for every moment of tension-filled chase, casting curses, or hiding behind a door and waiting for a Dark wizard—like him, now—to come out of a house, there were a hundred spent filling out paperwork and testifying before the Wizengamot and arguing over procedures and talking to people who wanted to spit in your face.  
  
Harry had an inkling, now, that people like Malfoy would go after the Dark Arts not only because they might grant them power, but because the challenge was more _fun_ than a lot of other things they could be doing.  
  
“A Slytherin mindset isn’t necessary for the Dark Arts, but it gets you along the paths faster,” Malfoy told him, talking in a dreamy, distant way. “And you have the seeds of that in you. No wonder you found the way there on your own.”  
  
Harry folded his arms, and the white snake wrapped back around his neck. It was talking to him in Parseltongue, soothing words, but for once, Harry didn’t want to pay attention. “It’s still condescending.”  
  
“No,” Malfoy whispered, and took a sliding step towards him to grip Harry’s arm. He didn’t see or didn’t care about the way the white snake extended towards him, and Harry knew which one he thought was more likely. “You don’t _understand._ It’s still something you have in you, something we would be hard put to teach you. You can develop certain qualities with enough hard work. But this is a greater potential.”  
  
Harry scanned his face, and still saw nothing there but wonder, glee, the edges of reflected glory. Malfoy was more excited for Harry being like this than he was for some of the goals they had achieved so far.  
  
It made Harry wonder what it would be like to stay beside someone like this, someone who took what he wanted. Not with no thought of the consequences, but because he had judged the consequences and found them worth paying.  
  
It was the way that Harry had once wanted to live.  
  
“Thank you,” he said at last. “But that still doesn’t give us a plan.”  
  
Parkinson and Malfoy smiled at each other, then at him, and Harry stood up a little straighter. Perhaps he could have two sets of friends.  
  
And by the smiles directed at him, both of them might have _brilliant_ plans.


	13. A Storm of Serpents

  
Draco looked up from his breakfast when one of the silent wards went off. It was like a vibration in his skull, the way that he imagined some of Harry’s snakes might hear the world. And it meant that someone had come to the front gates of the Manor and tangled himself in one of the traps there.  
  
Draco sighed and stood. “Do you want to come with me?” he asked Harry, who was licking apple juice from his fingers. “There’s a disturbance at the front of the house. Probably someone who wanted an interview with you and didn’t go through the proper channels.”  
  
“An owl, you mean?” Harry was still licking as he stood up. Draco strode around the table, grabbed his hand, and sucked expertly on his fingers for a moment until the last trace of the taste was removed.  
  
When he glanced at Harry, it was to find him standing still with an expression of bliss on his face. Draco laughed and slapped his back to wake him out of it. “I mean he didn’t go through me. Come on, we have to find out what he wants.”  
  
Harry muttered something uncomplimentary about Draco’s certainty as they left the dining room, but then, if he wanted his fingers clean and didn’t want Draco doing it, he should have had one of his snakes lick them. The white serpent was coiled on his shoulder as usual. Draco let one eye stray backwards, casually, not trying to make out anything more than what simple looking would show him, and this time he did see the blunt, sleek nose and the bright eyes before the vision blurred again.  
  
He was learning to see them. He could have done a little dance step right there in the corridor.  
  
But that would have made Harry ask what he was doing, and Draco would have let the answer distract them both. For now, they belonged at the front gate, and he did his best to assume a sober expression as they walked.   
  
*  
  
Harry stared at the man tangled upside-down in an invisible net near the gates. Every time he moved, the net bulged, and then settled more comfortably back around him. Harry only knew that because of the way the man’s limbs were contorted and his face smashed flat as though pressed against a window, and because Malfoy had condescended to explain it to him on their way down the gravel path.   
  
It had to be agonizing, if the way he twisted his shoulders was any indication. But he still tried to spit some brave threat at Malfoy.  
  
“Oh, a hero,” Malfoy said, in the disappointed tones that someone would use when they pulled a tiny fish from the water, and waved his wand. The net went slack, leaving the man dangling upside-down by one foot instead. He gave a little shriek and tried to shield his head with his arms before he realized that he hadn’t actually fallen to the path. Then the arms unfolded again, cautiously.  
  
Harry laughed, and winced a moment later. That wasn’t something he would have done a few days ago, was it? Laugh at someone’s pain? He had changed in more ways than just the obvious.  
  
The white serpent coiled on top of his head like a slow-moving crown, bathing his ears in cool scales. _Of course you have, brother. Your mistake is in thinking that anyone will hate you for such an occurrence.  
  
I think he might hate me, _ Harry hissed back, eyes on the bulging face now twisted in his direction.  
  
 _I meant someone who_ counts, the white snake responded, twisting a segment of his body upside-down so that he could look the stranger in the eyes.   
  
Harry might have continued the conversation, but Malfoy was talking, and he would be the one to ask the interesting questions and get answers. “What are you doing here?” Malfoy asked. “You really ought to have known better than to simply charge the wards on a self-professed Dark wizard’s house. Where are we going to get our next generation of heroes, if you insist on being so stupid?”  
  
The man was turning red-faced, and his eyes were blinking continually. Harry sighed, because Malfoy didn’t seem the type to take notice of it himself, and laid one scaled finger on Malfoy’s wrist.  
  
He went too still in response. Harry couldn’t imagine that Malfoy was _frightened_ when Harry touched him like that, which probably meant—  
  
Harry flushed and tugged his hand back. “Look,” he said, “all the blood is rushing to his head. You won’t get any answers if you keep holding him upside-down like that. Turn him upright, and he might answer you.”  
  
“You always spoil my fun,” Malfoy whined, but he turned the man over again and lowered him to the paths. He promptly tried to run out the gates, but what Harry could only think of as leg-traps this time, steel coils rising from beneath the gravel, seized him and sent him sprawling. The man rolled over and stared at them, face and hands cut and scraped from colliding with the ground.  
  
Harry finally recognized him then, the way he hadn’t been able to with the strange expressions the man was making in the net and the unusual perspective of seeing him upside-down. “Ivan?” he asked in surprise. “What are _you_ doing here?”  
  
Ivan Ashburg, the youngest of the current class of Auror trainees, stood up, struggled against the magic holding him prisoner for a moment, and then seemed to find his balance, because he tilted his head back haughtily and folded his arms. “Rescuing you,” he said bitterly. His eyes swept Harry up and down. “I thought you were a victim of Malfoy’s manipulations. But that’s not it? It’s all true, isn’t it?”  
  
Harry nodded, aware of the way Malfoy looked at him. “Yes. I’m a Dark wizard, for the reasons I said in Skeeter’s article.”  
  
Ashburg didn’t answer in the way that Harry would have expected him to, and Harry looked down to find that Ashburg’s eyes were locked on his hands. The expression on his face would have been appropriate for a child’s murder. Harry clenched his shortened, scale-covered fingers and started to tuck them away.  
  
Malfoy’s hand landed on his right wrist, and a thrown coil of the white serpent’s body on the left. Harry looked at the snake first. It looked steadily back at him, but for once said nothing. There was a soothing chorus of hisses from the snakes on the ground around him instead—and they were there, a herd of spitting cobras, snapping and striking at air in the way that Harry knew he _could_ command them to strike at Ashburg, if he wanted to.  
  
Harry turned to meet Malfoy’s eyes.  
  
They were even less expressive than the snake’s. Malfoy must have a lot of practice at hiding his emotions in the presence of people he didn’t deem worthy to know them, Harry thought, like Ashburg. His fingers tightened, and the message was all there in the way he held onto Harry’s wrist, and then released it.  
  
Harry nodded, and kept his hands in plain view. “As you can see,” he said to Ashburg, striving for dignity that was still hard against the disgust in Ashburg’s eyes, “I’m happy here. So there was no reason for you to come.”  
  
“Maybe,” Ashburg said, as if talking to himself, “it’s like a rash. The rash is a symptom of the disease. If you cure the rash, it does nothing to halt the disease.” He looked at Harry, and his eyes were deep and searching.  
  
Harry blinked. He had recognized the quote from Healer Yvonne’s lectures; she was the Healer hired to give the Auror trainees a good idea of what they could do on the battlefield and what they couldn’t do, and how to recognize common diseases that might come from curses or sheer weariness. But he had no idea how Ashburg meant the quote to apply here. “What?”  
  
Ashburg went on staring. Harry noticed the cobras shifting back, and held them in check with a simple hiss. Malfoy stood still beside him, which Harry hoped meant he wasn’t about to attack, either.  
  
“Yes,” Ashburg said with a sigh, and whipped his wand up with the quickness that Harry should have remembered. Ashburg had been first in his class when it came to dueling for a reason. “ _Reducto!_ ”  
  
Harry ducked immediately, trying to angle his body so that he could block the hex’s access to Malfoy at the same time, but realized in the next moment that the hex had been aimed above his head anyway.  
  
At the white serpent.  
  
It went flying, and Harry heard the limp body crash into the path an instant later. He heard no hissing from it, nothing but the sound of that landing. He stared over his shoulder and found it lying still, the neck twisted to the side as if broken, the golden sheen that always lurked beneath the scales dull and battered.  
  
Harry turned back around to look at Ashburg, who was nodding. “The snakes are the real disease,” he explained to Harry. “So it’s no good cursing the scales away from your fingers when the snakes are still there.”  
  
Harry raised his hand, and the cobras flowed forwards.   
  
*  
  
Draco made himself stop looking for some stir of life in the white serpent. It might have survived the curse, but then, they had seen in hospital that magic was able to touch the snakes as physical blows were not. In any case, that was not his concern at the moment. His concern was that Harry might slaughter their guest.  
  
Hardly the best action for the image of the Chosen One gone Dark.  
  
Draco moved sideways, wriggling, and trying to get between their prisoner and the vague grey-black blurs that were racing away from Harry. He doubted the physical barrier of his body would mean much by itself. The cobras could simply flow around him and go on.   
  
But the symbolic value of the barrier might mean something.  
  
He stood there, and sure enough, the grey-black snakes crashed together a meter away. Draco stared and made out the edges of flared hoods, enough to be sure they were cobras. He felt almost childishly pleased at having understood _that,_ as he always did when he secured a new piece of information.   
  
“Get out of the way, Malfoy.”  
  
Harry spoke in such a guttural hiss that it sounded as if he were tearing up his lungs to speak. Draco met his eyes and shook his head. “No. You don’t want to kill him, because then you would probably lose your friends.”  
  
Harry paused. Draco had _known_ that was the best way to phrase things. At the moment, Harry couldn’t care about what the public thought. It was only a personal loss like his friends’ regard that would threaten him.  
  
Then Harry hissed, and his jaws rippled and parted enough that Draco could see most of the way down his throat. That was a change Draco knew Harry hadn’t undergone before. He watched, his body feeling like an hourglass around his humming heart.  
  
Harry’s fangs lengthened, and the inside of his throat gleamed black. The only snake that Draco knew which looked like that was the black mamba. He knew how quickly a mamba’s venom killed, and wondered if the liquid which slid along Harry’s fangs now was that.  
  
He would have liked to touch and find out. He wanted to touch everything about Harry, to cut himself on the fangs and the scales, to know him and understand him in a way that no one had ever known or understood any other Parselmouth.  
  
But there was an audience, and most of the things Draco wanted to do couldn’t have an audience. At least, not the first time. Perhaps later, if Harry wanted to explore a little…  
  
Draco laid that idea firmly down and smiled at Harry. “You can bite me,” he said. “But you’ll have to do it before you bite him, and that means that you’ll lose one of your allies, and the sanctuary of the Manor. Isn’t that more important than punishing him?”  
  
He caught a wriggle of the white snake’s body from the corner of his eye. _Good._ He didn’t dare break eye contact with Harry right now, but it was good to know that the creature would survive.  
  
“I only did what I was supposed to,” Ashburg said, in the high tones of an astonished teenager who couldn’t believe he wasn’t being hailed as a hero. “What they taught us to do in Auror training.”  
  
“I would shut up, if I was you,” Draco said, and continued to look at Harry. He was the one who was important here, the one whose companion had possibly been damaged.  
  
The one who continued to watch Ashburg, and whose fangs were lengthening to absurd dimensions as Draco watched.  
  
When in doubt, take a risk. Draco had learned that lesson well as he delved into the Dark Arts, even though he thought it wasn’t the one his mentors had wanted him to learn. Professor Snape in particular had been a fine one for taking risks, like spying on the Dark Lord, and then trying to inspire his students to caution instead.  
  
Draco reached out and trailed a finger down one of Harry’s fangs, towards the tip.  
  
Harry wrenched his head backwards at once. He had extra bones in his neck, or so it seemed, given how fluidly it traveled. He watched Draco with that flat stare that made his eyes seem about to sink into his head, and then he closed his eyes and turned around, kneeling down on the path beside the white serpent. It was clearer than ever as it climbed his arm, like a thread of cloud. Draco wondered if the snake’s weakness might destroy some of the magic that would mostly keep it from a non-Parselmouth’s eyes.  
  
“I don’t understand. Why is he upset?”  
  
Draco waited a moment, until he had his breathing and heartbeat under control, and then turned and faced Ashburg. At least the expression on his face was enough to make Ashburg shut his mouth as tightly as if he never intended to open it until he had grown his own fangs.  
  
“Harry?” Draco asked gently. He didn’t look away from Ashburg for the same reason that he hadn’t turned from Harry a moment before: because there was no telling what stupidities would happen if he did. But at least he thought the worst part of the crisis was past.  
  
Harry moved towards them. The white serpent was draped around his shoulders, fully visible now, and Draco rejoiced in the sight. Harry stroked the long neck, and the serpent buried its head under the collar of Harry’s shirt.  
  
“You tell them,” Harry said, his eyes burning, his voice quiet. “You tell them that I’m happy here, and that any attempts to _rescue_ me are futile.” He cocked his neck at that fluid angle again, and Ashburg clutched his wand and looked sick. “Yes, I’m a Dark wizard, and all the Howlers they send aren’t going to change that. I don’t care how much it damages the reputation of the Ministry to have one of their Aurors go Dark. They did _nothing_ to help me when this Dark gift started to overwhelm me, and they turned on me quickly enough. Go back and tell them that.”  
  
Draco bit his lip to keep from crowing, momentarily grateful that _he_ didn’t have fangs, as he released the coils on Ashburg’s feet. Yes, that was a strong message to send back, and Ashburg would probably embellish the tale to show what horrors he’d survived. They’d started out giving a balanced picture of what Harry was like now, but the balance would have to tip. First they would show him as scary, then they would give the picture of him as a victim suffering from the wizarding world’s betrayal, and then they would seesaw back and forth between those two options, working always towards the day when people would accept Dark power as “normal.”  
  
Ashburg backed up one step, then another, then hesitated. “I was only trying to help,” he said. “You could have acknowledged that.”  
  
This time, the fangs seemed to unfold without Harry ever opening his mouth, as though they were made of rubber and had simply popped out to their full length, and the hiss would have paralyzed Draco if he hadn’t been prepared for it. Ashburg turned and fled, his heels churning up the path. Draco clucked his tongue and made a mental note to remind the house-elves to rake the path clean again.  
  
“Sorry,” Harry said.  
  
Draco glanced at him. Harry was shaking, his arms still full of the white serpent. Draco checked that he hadn’t shat on the lawn, and then said, “For what? You reacted as any Parselmouth will when his snakes are threatened. The Dark Lord took threats to Nagini more seriously than ones to himself.” Draco had to pause and added, “Of course, some of that was because he believed he was invincible, but still.”  
  
*  
  
Harry laughed shakily and cradled the white snake closer. He felt the gentlest touch of a lipless mouth against his cheek, the flick of a tongue on his ear, the softest hiss. _I am all right, brother. I was stunned, not hurt._  
  
“I mean that I’m sorry for losing my temper,” Harry said. “I know that wasn’t part of any plan.” He still found it hard to look Malfoy in the eye, and concentrated on the gold threads between the serpent’s scales instead.  
  
“Not part of any plan, but since we hadn’t made many at the moment, it will do,” Malfoy said, and stretched out a hand. Harry had crouched low to shield the white snake before he thought about it. Malfoy only paused with his hand there, not retracted. “Frightening him and letting him go will show the more thoughtful that Dark wizards have some restraint, some mercy,” Malfoy added. “Of course some of them will react as if we had dismembered the idiot, but we can’t do anything about the lunatic fringe. Work with the reasonable ones.”  
  
“I wonder what my friends will say,” Harry said, and fell in beside Malfoy as they made their slow way down the path towards the Manor.   
  
“Don’t predict it in advance,” Malfoy said, and coiled his arm around Harry’s waist, low enough not to make the snake feel threatened. “They haven’t rejected you yet, and that’s about the best we can hope for.”  
  
Harry nodded, and sat down at the breakfast table with a good mood that lasted until after the meal, when a ponderous-looking official owl came through the window. Harry took the letter it carried and turned it over, staring at the Gringotts seal on the back.  
  
“Open it,” Malfoy said. Harry looked up and found him lounging in his chair, legs crossed under the table. “Putting something you dread off always makes it worse.”   
  
Harry grunted in acknowledgment of that and tore the envelope open. Out tumbled the Gringotts letter that he knew he would find inside, which began _Dear Mr. Potter, following your reveal as a Dark wizard…_  
  
“The Ministry is freezing my accounts,” Harry said dully, and laid the letter on the table in front of him. The white snake extended down his arm and pulsed its tongue out, touching the parchment, then pulled back as if it smelled bad. Harry stroked its neck mechanically, and looked at Malfoy. “How can I help you when I don’t have the money to do it?”  
  
*  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. “You aren’t paying me any money to stay here,” he said. “I took you as an ally not for your fortune, but for other reasons.” He met Harry’s eyes and smiled, and saw the flush that crept up Harry’s neck. _Good._ If he got Harry to think about their sex life, which he was still conflicted about, that meant he was worrying less about the Ministry’s stupid moves. “I have more than enough money to support us and obtain the materials, such as Potions ingredients, that you might need in your new life.”  
  
“But I don’t want to be dependent on you.” Harry pushed his body away from the table, and his arms bulged and rippled from the golden-brown rays of scales running down them, shoulder to wrist.  
  
“Not dependent means all sorts of things,” Draco said, and leaned back further in his chair. God, he wanted to touch Harry right now, to see how smooth the scales were, how far they underlay the skin, but it wouldn’t be a good idea when he looked as if he were about to fly to pieces, and worse still would be for Harry to see his erection. “For example, right now you’re dependent on my advice for how you negotiate the Dark paths. Would you like to get rid of that? Move past the ones you’ve seen already to a new one?”  
  
Harry swung to stare at him. Then he said, “You want—you think that’s a good thing to do right _now,_ instead of trying to get my account access back?”  
  
“Cutting off your money is a tool the Ministry thinks it can use to control you,” Draco began.  
  
“And they’re _right_ ,” Harry snapped. A long blue racer popped into existence, coiled around his leg, and hissed at Draco silently. Draco hissed right back at it, mouth open, and the racer paused to stare at him. Harry might not have noticed. “I don’t know what they want, but I have to go talk to them.”  
  
“No, you don’t,” Draco said calmly. “Because what they want you to do is step back from the Dark paths, and I’ve already explained to you—and Pansy’s explained to you—that that’s impossible. So what you do instead is face and find something else to do with the Dark Arts, something that will strengthen your magic and give you the sense of triumph that you need to feel calmer.”  
  
Harrry folded his arms. The scales were dying down to a dull golden shimmer now, and the white serpent had come out of its hiding place beneath his shirt to wind like a thread around his neck. “Is everything like that with you?” he asked. “Calculated, _choosing_ how to feel?”  
  
Draco laughed aloud. “If I could choose how I felt, I wouldn’t have made as many stupid mistakes as I did when I was younger, I assure you. But yes, that’s part of it. Your enemies want you to do something? They can’t force you. You’re _free._ That’s part of being Dark, being free of all the demands that other people try to make on your magic. They want you to surrender your wand, or promise that you’ll stop using Parseltongue.” He stood up and held his hand across the table, and that wasn’t only to feel the stubby bluntness of Harry’s fingers or the smoothness of his nails, though that was a bonus. “But you won’t. Go and show them that you’re still going to use your Dark magic, because it’s yours, your commitment, your birthright.”  
  
*  
  
Harry swallowed. That sounded like childish behavior to him, in a way, doing something just because someone didn’t want you to.  
  
But it was true that the Ministry didn’t offer him a solution. He couldn’t just step out of the Dark paths or banish his snakes. And Malfoy’s solution…  
  
Sounded a lot more _fun_ , actually.  
  
 _That’s what some of it’s about,_ he decided, as he took Malfoy’s hand. _Remembering to enjoy myself, that brooding all the time about the injustices that Parseltongue causes me isn’t going to help me._  
  
“Sounds good,” he said, and watched as Malfoy stroked the scales on his hand.  
  
 _One person finds me beautiful._  
  
 _Two, brother,_ said the white serpent, and threw a coil around his throat.


	14. Mask of Scales

  
“Draco!”  
  
Draco glanced up and put the paper down. He’d been reading the story on Ashburg, who had of course gone to the press and tried to spill them some nonsense about how frightening Harry was. Since Skeeter, with an instinctive nose for the juiciest parts, had managed to worm out of Ashburg that he had charged the Manor’s gates without concern for wards and had threatened Harry’s snakes, Draco doubted that much harm would come of it.  
  
But Pansy’s face in the fire told the story of a different kind of harm. Draco slid to his knees in front of the hearth and nodded to show that he was listening.  
  
“There was a Ministry official peering in at my window a few minutes ago,” Pansy reported, wringing her hands in front of her. “He came that close without my wards going off. What does that mean?”  
  
Draco laughed aloud. Pansy glared at him. “It means that he didn’t trip your wards,” Draco said, when he licked his lips and got his laughter under control. “You know that very well, Pansy, so why call me?”  
  
“Because it wasn’t someone I recognized,” Pansy said, words short as the grass in the gardens after the house-elves got done tending to it. “He wore the cloak of an Unspeakable, but it was flung back so I could see his face. What now?”  
  
Draco rocked back on his heels and spent a moment rubbing his legs, to stretch the muscles and calm down a bit of the excitement climbing through him. “It means that we finally bring forth all our proof about Dark Arts in the Ministry,” he said. “Because only Dark Arts could have got past a Dark witch’s wards.”  
  
Pansy paused. Draco waited. He knew that she had always been most hesitant about this inevitable step. They had gathered information on the Ministry and the people who used Dark Arts in it for a reason, but those people remained powerful, able to squash mentions of their name in a paper the way that most others wouldn’t be able to.  
  
A personal intrusion past her wards had given Pansy the anger she needed, though. She nodded. “Let’s go. Will Potter join us?”  
  
Draco smiled again, and thought of the cobra that Weasley had used against him. “I think the question is of the speed with which he’ll do it, not whether he will.”  
  
*  
  
Harry was having some trouble in training the Unspeakable cobra.  
  
It wasn’t like his other serpents, who would respond the moment he raised a hand or a word or a flicker of his will. Instead, the cobra moved sluggishly and only seemed interested in lying looped around Harry’s arm or neck. Harry tried not to imagine that was because it had been bred to strangle people as well as poison them.  
  
It would listen to him, and it would do what he said. But slowly. And in some of the battle situations that Harry expected to be involved in, that could be deadly.  
  
“Listen to me,” he told the cobra, who was on the floor in front of him, dull eyes on his face. The white serpent was down, coiled behind it, and Harry tried not to feel that his throat was naked without that particular snake. “When I gesture, I want you to strike at this shadow.” He had stripped the shadow from one of his fingers and left it on the floor, a spell that he had read about in a book from Malfoy’s library. “Do you understand?”  
  
The cobra watched him. Harry shut his eyes and took a deep breath. Yes, he could create a snake that would answer the needs he might have for the cobra far faster and more efficiently, but that wouldn’t help them much if they faced an army of Unspeakables wielding these bloody things. If he was able to use one of them against their masters, then he might be better at seizing control of others in the middle of a distracting situation, too.  
  
He stepped back, away from the shadow, and hissed the command.  
  
The cobra hesitated, but in the end it undulated forwards and struck with its fangs at the shadow. Harry frowned. _Still not fast enough. If that shadow was a mouse, it would have had time to scuttle away._  
  
He heard a door opening behind him, but didn’t take his eyes off the cobra. It had frozen in an unnatural position, head lowered and spreading hood facing the floor. Harry wondered if the magic that powered it was running out, or if it had only a certain amount of venom in its fangs and would give up when it was low.  
  
“Harry.”  
  
Harry turned around quickly, both because of what Malfoy had called him and because of the way which he spoke. Sure enough, Malfoy was flowing through the room with a high head and brilliant eyes, and Harry swallowed, feeling his heartbeat expand as though he had a suddenly larger body.  
  
“Did my friends come back?” he asked.  
  
Malfoy paused, then said, “Not yet. But an Unspeakable came through Pansy’s wards to spy on her, and he couldn’t have done that without Dark magic. We’re going to send messages to the Dark wizards in the Ministry that we know about them and they should come forwards into the light.” He stepped up to Harry and clasped his hands on either side of his collarbone, which neither the white serpent nor the anaconda lounging on the couch got upset about. Harry lifted his head and tried not to, either. “And I know that there’s evidence in the Ministry itself that would prove some of our contentions. I want to go and get it.”  
  
Harry shivered. Then he said, “That’s probably what they’re expecting us to do, and they have traps in place.”  
  
Malfoy smiled. “Traps that can fool someone who was there only a few days before as an Auror? I doubt they can have changed _all_ the wards.”  
  
Harry stared. It was true, he knew. The Ministry would spend a great deal of money to make changes to the wards if a criminal managed to break in or escape from a holding cell, but that had happened only twice since Harry had been an Auror, and the tightening of the wards had happened across a period of weeks. Even if they had decided there was a danger that Harry could betray them, most of the traps would be the same.  
  
And…  
  
“You’re asking me to give up any allegiance I might still have to the Ministry,” he said, looking Malfoy in the eye.  
  
*  
  
Draco shook Harry by the shoulders. Perhaps not a wise move, as the white serpent slid towards his ankles in a wave of light and even the Unspeakables’ cobra looked up, but at the moment, Draco didn’t particularly care.   
  
“Why should you have _any_ allegiance?” he hissed into Harry’s ear. “You’re a Dark wizard now, and whatever private bargain of friendship you might come to with Weasley, the rest of the Department wouldn’t see you the same way. The Minister won’t give you special friendship or favors anymore. All of the Aurors thought you should be in St. Mungo’s, and one of them came _here_ to attack you.”  
  
“He thought he was rescuing me.” Harry’s face was wide and troubled.  
  
“I don’t _care_ ,” Draco said, and gave him another shake. The white serpent slid forwards again, but Draco pointed to him, and had the happiness of seeing Harry hesitate. “He almost killed your friend. Do you remember that? Why do you have more tolerance for someone who did that to your snakes than for someone who’s trying to give you the most freedom and the best life possible?”  
  
“In exchange for information.” Harry lifted his shoulders and folded his arms, and broke free of Draco’s hold that way, with a little twist that he must have picked up from the Aurors. The white snake was wrapped around his arm in seconds, hissing at Draco with an emphasis that he knew wasn’t imagined. “You’ve never made that a secret, that you want to know more about Parseltongue in exchange for helping me.”  
  
“That way, _you_ learn more,” Draco said. “And I’m no altruist, but neither is the Ministry.” He wanted to hit Harry, and he wanted to hold up his hand and make him look at the golden scales that were there all the time now. “Honestly, Harry. Do you really think that they have better intentions for you than I do?”  
  
“I think that I might hurt someone I don’t want to hurt. Not everyone in the Ministry can be a Dark wizard.”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. “No, but the ones who aren’t don’t care enough about you to speak up for you, and the ones who are are hypocrites. Come _with_ us. Or admit that you want to leave, and leave, because you aren’t interested in an alliance with me and Pansy and anyone else we might recruit to it anymore.”  
  
Harry stood more upright at that, and closed his hands into fists. Small snakes sprouted from them, thread-like, waving in the air like coral strands in the sea. Draco felt his blood heat, but at the moment, he was less interested in the way Harry changed than what he said. So he didn’t look away from his eyes, until Harry closed them and turned his head away.  
  
*  
  
 _It’s different. I was loyal to the Ministry—  
  
And you chose to break that loyalty when you left St. Mungo’s, _ said the white snake in Harry’s ear, clear and sharp. He had never heard it use such human diction before, or such complex sentences. _What do you have left? Only an abstract ideal, and the worry of what your friends will say about you. Only the worry that you might feel good when you raid the Ministry, and your fear that anything that makes you feel good is wrong._  
  
Harry opened his eyes and nodded. Malfoy only stood there, slim and upright as one of the posts of his gates, and said, “What does a nod mean?”  
  
“It means that it’s taking me a shorter time now to see that you’re right,” Harry said, and gave him a painful smile. “I already made the decision that’s going to exile me in a lot of people’s eyes. I’m still struggling with what that means and how essentially my whole life has changed, but you’re right, and it has. I’ll come with you.”  
  
Malfoy gave him a cool smile. Harry wondered why, but decided that it was probably his resistance in the first place that had dimmed Malfoy’s enthusiasm for him right now.  
  
 _Well, I’m sorry for that, but if I didn’t consider this fully and decide that I can make the commitment, then I might break in the middle of the raid, and that would be more disastrous for Malfoy and Parkinson than anything else._  
  
Harry didn’t say it, because he was still learning how to be a Dark wizard, and he would rather agree than disagree with Malfoy right now. “What part of the Ministry are we going to raid?” he asked. “I assume the Auror Department, but what else?” The white snake gave a slow, contented hiss on his shoulder, and Harry reached up to stroke him without taking his eyes off Malfoy.  
  
“The Department of Mysteries,” Malfoy said, as cordially as if they were discussing the Atrium.  
  
Harry blinked. Then he said, “I know nothing about the defenses there. I hope you have someone who does.”  
  
“Blaise did a little work for them at one time, and I have his notes,” Malfoy said, patting the front of his robes. Hidden parchment bent gently back and forth. “And you forgot about the Dark paths. The Unspeakables are curious, and some of them use the Dark Arts, which means steps down the paths whether they like that or not. Some of them, ones that I’m familiar with, open directly into the heart of the Department of Mysteries.”  
  
Harry stared at him some more. Then he said, “I can’t even imagine—you could do so much. Why wait until now?”  
  
Malfoy’s grin was as narrow as his eyes. “Because I have to take risks as a Dark wizard, but that includes _choosing_ the ones I take, because otherwise I might not live to practice some of the magic I want to. And I never had enough strength beside me to take on the Department of Mysteries before. Simply because I can reach into it doesn’t mean I can overpower the guards waiting for me there.” He paused. “You will come.”  
  
Not a question, and perhaps Harry should have been angry at that, but he’d already done his flailing for today, and wasn’t interested in sounding like an immature child who didn’t understand the decisions he’d made again. He nodded. “I’m in.”  
  
*  
  
Hours later, standing in his bedroom as he prepared for the assault on the Department of Mysteries, and Draco was still filled with a searing, tingling bliss that threatened to scrub all other emotions and cares from his mind if he thought too much about it.  
  
He had to shut his eyes and lean one hand on the mirror in front of him to get some of it back. Then he opened his eyes, fixed them on the reflection of his collar, and carefully slipped his hand to the side, then back in, in a certain motion he had first learned when opening the gate to one of the furthest paths.  
  
The reflected collar sagged a bit, but Draco felt no change in the weight of the real one. He smiled. Blaise had reported mirrors among the Unspeakables. If Draco encountered them, then he had a weapon.  
  
He turned away and listened for the whoosh of the Floo. That would be Pansy, arriving. Draco nodded. He heard Harry stirring in his room down the corridor. It was almost time to leave.  
  
Draco opened the door and found Harry stepping out. He looked uncertainly at Draco and touched the front of the tighter green robes that Draco had given him, but didn’t speak.  
  
Draco looked him over with approval. The robes were close to Harry’s body, not close enough to restrict his movements, but not flowing; there were too many things with sharp teeth in the Department of Mysteries that might snare the edge of a trailing cloak or hem. They had silver buttons, and Draco had already shown Harry the things the buttons could change into and explained how they worked. And around Harry’s neck, his arms, his legs, his waist, gamboled what looked like at least fifty snakes, of all colors. Indeed, Draco only knew the color of his robes from a glimpse of green here and there. The whole of Harry’s body, instead, was a mass of colors, clad in snakescale armor.  
  
On top of his head, on the shaggy dark hair, rose the white serpent like an Egyptian crown. Draco let his eyes burn over the last few inches of Harry’s body, and return to his face. “You look _stunning_ tonight,” he whispered.  
  
Harry flushed, only visible on his cheeks, and nodded choppily. “So do you,” he said, and looked at Draco’s pale grey robes with a cock of his head. “But not armed.”  
  
Draco smiled and tapped his temple with one finger, his wand with the other. “When a Dark wizard is this armed with spells, then he doesn’t need the presence of snakes like yours. Magnificent though they are,” he added loftily as he watched the shape of the white serpent grow a bit indistinct and sway towards him. Disrespect towards the serpents produced by Parseltongue was enough to remove the sight of them, then. Draco didn’t want that to happen.  
  
Harry accepted that with another nod, and then turned his head towards the stairs. Draco caught the fast glimpse of a forked tongue darting out between his lips. “Is that Parkinson coming?”  
  
“You could use first names,” Pansy said, appearing at the top of the stairs. Draco felt Harry start at the sight of her. She wore her dark hair bound back and high on her neck with a cage of wood around it, and her robes looked like Harry’s under the snake-scale. On them shone tiny golden keys, apparently fabric, but Draco had been on the other side of those keys in a duel and knew the harm they could inflict. Pansy’s wrists were wound with silver wire, and her smile glinted on her lips as she watched Harry notice it, but her next words were to Draco. “You’re ready to open the paths?”  
  
Draco nodded, and let some of his joy leave him. He still found happiness in walking the paths, of course he did, or he never would have become a Dark wizard. He had seen enough of those wizards who did things for duty instead of pleasure. His father had been one, before the end, and Severus another.  
  
They could teach him. He would not allow them to rule him.  
  
“Come here,” he said, and held out his hands. Harry stepped up and clasped his wrist without hesitation. Pansy, on the other side, arranged herself more closely, so that she was holding on to the middle of his forearm.  
  
Draco closed his eyes. The joy was solemn now, and he filled his mind with images of the dangers on the paths, the ones that had to make him respect them—and to walk them without respect for what would happen was impossible. The Hanging Tree. The White Lake. The black mountain at the center of all his dreams, and his nightmares, when he dreamed of what had come swarming down its slopes to fight him.  
  
Draco opened his eyes and breathed out—  
  
And closed them again, and opened them somewhere else.  
  
He could feel the stillness of Harry’s snakes as they looked about. They would wonder whether they were physically here, or only mentally, the way that Harry had walked the paths he’d discovered in hospital. Harry’s own tongue was darting out again as he sought sensory clues, his eyes flaring.  
  
Pansy, who’d been here before, tilted her head back and admired the flat, peaceful sky overhead, with three white moons in a row and one large, corpse-pale star. “Are we ready to walk?” she asked.  
  
“A moment,” Draco murmured, and spoke to Harry. “You have to stay close to me. You have to stay holding onto me. Or there’s no telling where you might end up, and most people can’t walk the paths alone.”  
  
“Even with snakes to lead them.” It wasn’t a question. Harry had seen the path of rough black sand beneath their feet by now, and the trailing ribbons of shadow that crossed it, obscuring the boundaries. And he would have heard the shrieks and peals of wild bells and laughter from the darkness on either side.  
  
“Yes,” Draco said, and then called upon his memory of the first time he’d walked this path and struck his foot against the dirt.  
  
The shadows shivered. Across them, like a shimmering path of moonlight across open water, spread a yellow glow. Draco strode forwards, walking only on the yellow, not letting his feet touch anything else, and Pansy and Harry folded in behind him, avoiding the shadows, avoiding the edges of the path. They, unlike him, could walk on other things than the light, the faint margin of safety he’d opened and which would linger behind him for a short while.  
  
But there was no one save Draco who could open the way.  
  
It was awkward and shuffling, but Draco took that as only another challenge to walking the paths. It was easier than his first navigation of this part of the Darkness, anyway. He fixed his eyes ahead and remained attentive, always, to the way the light flickered and danced, changed and charged, the way he was attentive to the first fumes and bubbles of a dangerous potion.  
  
Something shrieked off to the side of the path, and a hand reached onto the dirt—well, something that changed constantly between a paw and a hand. Draco turned to the side, so that one foot was still safely on the path of light, and stamped on the reaching limb with the other one. The shriek came again, a swift, bubbling sound that died into a chorus of many cries, and the hand retreated. Draco smiled again. He _did_ like to imagine that the creatures who tried that and suffered for it were being torn to pieces by a pack of their own kind.  
  
He lifted his head and walked forwards, and after a moment of hesitation—which Draco hoped didn’t imply that Harry was getting skittish—the others followed.  
  
*  
  
Harry had never been in a place like this. He had never imagined that one existed.   
  
Up until now, he would have said that his strangest experience had come the first time he explored the Department of Mysteries or in the Forbidden Forest when he was using the Resurrection Stone. But this was something else. He could feel the darkness on his skin like thick grass on a summer’s night, could hear whispers constantly darting around him, as though each of his serpents felt a different kind of vibration.  
  
Since the darkness, and the things in it, wanted to lure them off the paths, Harry expected offers of temptation. Freedom, peace, money, reconciliation with his friends. But there were other things in the whispers, and he couldn’t _believe_ how tempting they were.  
  
Knowledge. Fearlessness. The ability to walk out into the darkness, among the creatures who groped for them, and see them as they were.  
  
Harry half-shook his head, and concentrated on following Malfoy. He knew the temptations to walk off the path really were only that, temptations, and he could ignore them if he wished. But he had never expected that it would take so much effort.   
  
_Does this mean I’ve changed in some way since I became a Dark wizard?_ he asked the white serpent.  
  
 _No, brother,_ said the white snake, and flicked out its tongue to taste the night around them. He sounded cool and causal, though curious. _You have unlocked the door to a quality that has always been inside you. Or why so much investigation of mysteries when you were a child? Why did you have to know who Nicholas Flamel was, who was the Heir of Slytherin, what Snape’s real allegiances were?_ One coil of the gilded white body slid down and rubbed along Harry’s temples. _Now you have learned more about yourself, and now you have new mysteries that you might dare to investigate._  
  
Harry swallowed. The narrowness he had felt enclosing him since he came to Malfoy Manor—life without his friends, life under siege by people like Ashburg and tactics like the Ministry freezing his Gringotts accounts—began to slide away.   
  
There were worlds out there to explore, if he dared to tread them.  
  
Malfoy paused in front of him, and then reached out and ripped something from the air. Harry, just behind him, could feel the clench and tense of muscles in Malfoy’s arm and back. Then the ripping motion produced blue-black, hazy light, creating a tear down the middle of the world ahead of them, and Harry blinked, even that faint illumination concentrating strongly with the night they stood in.  
  
“Now,” Malfoy said. “Follow me, and be ready.”  
  
Harry heard the soft gasp of Parkinson’s delighted breath. And he felt the same delight stirring in him, suppressing the retort that none of them could be ready when they didn’t know exactly what guards the Unspeakables might have waiting.  
  
Together, they went forwards.


	15. Good Vibrations

  
Draco whipped his head to the side the moment they stepped through the doorway. They were in a small room in what might be the middle of the Department of Mysteries, as Blaise had described it, and it was octagonal, with walls that shone steadily, blue-black as cobalt. The light came from _inside_ them, a fact that already fascinated Draco, and which he would have to explore.  
  
But there was that distinct sensation of another presence in the room, and Pansy, whose job it was to find dangers like that, called out at the same moment, her fingers on the tiny golden keys that covered her robes. Draco raised his hand, the spells flexing in his mind, his tongue darting into position to speak them.  
  
The creature there moved faster than Draco had been prepared for, however—always a risk when one was following the Dark paths into a new place. They promised information, not safety. The three heads, each on a separate neck, whipped out, one aiming for each of them, and the heavy body behind them began to charge, bringing the danger closer.  
  
 _Hydra,_ Draco thought, old secrets clicking and spinning in his mind like glass beads falling into place. He flung himself to the floor, on hands and knees and then back, and spotted Pansy flipping head-over-heels behind him. The heads that had targeted them paused, jaws snapping uselessly at the air. Draco let out a small breath. Well, no one had ever said that hydras were smart. It would take it a moment to figure out why its attack had failed.  
  
The one that had headed for Harry was still suspended in midair. Draco turned his head, wondering if Harry had been stupid enough to get himself killed in the first minutes of the attack.  
  
No. That particular head had eyes that stared at the wall instead of at Harry, and there was already a faint glaze over them. Harry hissed to it, his hand lifted, his fingers hovering over the wrinkled blue-black skin of the hydra’s cheek.  
  
As Draco watched, his mouth open, the other two heads came around and slowed to a dangling version of the same beat that consumed their companion. The body was huge and heavy and relaxed behind them, as dark as the walls.  
  
Well. A hydra was a sort of a snake or dragon, after all, if one looked at it correctly.  
  
A forked tongue touched Harry’s fingers, and Harry cocked his head to the side. Draco felt a faint vibration in the bones of his wrists and hands, and thought it might be the hydra’s hissing, too low for most human beings to hear instead of feel. Harry nodded and turned back to face Draco and Pansy.  
  
“He says that there are two empty rooms beyond this one,” Harry murmured. “He would have sensed any other creatures if they were near, and either wanted to destroy or eat them. I think we can trust his perceptions, and _him_. He doesn’t have any concept of lying.” He stroked the hydra’s cheek again, giving it a ridiculously affectionate smile.  
  
Draco told himself it was degrading to be jealous of a monster, and stood up with a slight shift and jangle of his shoulders so that he could make sure all his hidden weapons were still concealed in his sleeves and robe collar. “You’re sure about that?”  
  
“About him not lying? Absolutely.” Harry had a quiet tone to his voice now that Draco hadn’t heard since Hogwarts—since the final battle with the Dark Lord, in fact, when Harry had confronted him and told the truth about the Elder Wand. “About being able to trust his perceptions? Not absolutely. Perhaps ninety percent. Perhaps the Department of Mysteries has bred some animals that a hydra can’t detect.”  
  
He turned around and smiled at them, while the hydra nuzzled the middle of his back like a three-headed kitten. “But I doubt it.”  
  
Pansy stood up, shaking her robes down around her. Draco nodded back to her glance and moved towards the door that he knew was hidden in a far wall. “Then let’s go,” he said, not looking back at Harry.  
  
*  
  
Harry spent a moment longer stroking the hydra’s skin. It was different from the scales of his serpents, not segmented, but cracked and sharp with it, small ridges poking him in the skin of his palms. He wished he could take the creature with him, but he thought Malfoy might object to giving it a home in the Manor.  
  
 _And I don’t have any other home right now._  
  
“ _Don’t tell anyone where we went, please,”_ he told the hydra in Parseltongue. “ _They would be able to find and destroy us._ ”  
  
The hydra gave his face another tongue-bath with all three tongues working in concert, and then turned away and lay down. Its body looked like an elephant’s, except for the wriggling tail that was another serpent. Harry hissed soothingly to it and then stepped out of the room, following Malfoy and Parkinson.  
  
Parkinson gave him an enigmatic glance as she passed, one that Harry didn’t think he could have read even if he knew her well. Perhaps she resented that he had saved her life, or resented that he had the skills to deal with the first threat when she didn’t. Harry mentally shrugged. It shouldn’t disrupt their alliance as they worked at finding the evidence of the Dark Arts in the Department and taking it out. He thought Parkinson was too professional for that.  
  
 _And she’s teaching you to be the same way, along with Malfoy._  
  
Harry bit his lip thoughtfully. Perhaps that was true. But he had trouble seeing it as a bad thing, now that he had finally accepted his position as a Dark wizard. No matter how Ron and Hermione decided to relate to him, he would never be the person he had been again. He would only be a happier Dark wizard if they decided to continue their friendship with him, not a Light one.  
  
And now that his accounts were frozen, he had to do something to live—something that didn’t involve simply relying on Malfoy for the rest of his natural lifespan.  
  
 _Which could be very long.  
  
Which will be, _ said the white serpent, and wound another coil of his body around Harry’s neck, only lifting his head as they came out into the first of the uninhabited rooms that the hydra had told them about.  
  
No animals here, no people, but a strange contraption in the center. Harry took a step away to look at it from the side, since Malfoy and Parkinson had already fanned out in front and back of it.  
  
It seemed to be a platform of glowing marble, lit from within the way the walls of the hydra’s room had been; Harry decided the Unspeakables must have a predilection for that kind of thing. It had four squat legs on the bottom, and an arch of silver extending up from the top that reminded Harry uncomfortably of a guillotine. Wheeling around the arch was a flock of what looked like crumpled balls of parchment, all shining as white as the marble. They darted through the arch in a regular rhythm, and each time, a flash of sulfur and brilliant light succeeded their passage. Harry thought some of them might have disappeared in their passage, but since the balls were moving too fast in the first place to keep track of, he wasn’t sure.  
  
“ _Look_ at that.” Malfoy leaned forwards on the balls of his feet, his voice sensual. The hand he stretched out towards the machine trembled. “Just _look_ at it.”  
  
Harry did, and still didn’t see anything different from what he’d already witnessed. “What?” he asked, knowing there must be something he missed.  
  
“Can’t you feel the magic?” Malfoy licked the air as if he was a snake himself, and Harry had to fight to keep his face stoic, to hide how much interest that simple gesture stirred in him. “The Dark power beating out from it? It’s like standing in the desert at noon.” He moved forwards and laid his hand on the silver arch before Harry could think to discourage him. Then again, he hadn’t thought Malfoy would be enough of a fool to do anything like that, either.  
  
Harry and Parkinson didn’t even look at each other, but acted together as if they had been doing it all their lives. They flung themselves forwards at the same time, and seized Malfoy’s arms.  
  
And then things erupted.  
  
*  
  
Draco knew that the others would think him stupid for acting on impulse—well, Harry would think Draco stupider than he already thought him, and Pansy would think that he should have told them what it was before he moved, and whether it was something they needed to be concerned about.   
  
But he knew the Dark power of the thing the moment he stepped into the room. It was the same kind of power that he had felt on the most distant paths he had conquered, a kind of power that needed to be courted into submission. And it loved nothing so much as daring, as an approach that didn’t flinch.  
  
Draco could have spoken to it or hesitated, but that would have lost him any chance of its respect. Now, although it might destroy him, it wouldn’t do that because it hated him or despised him.  
  
 _A small consolation,_ Draco thought, as silver lightning tore through him and kept his hand locked against the arch, while Harry’s and Pansy’s hands stuck to him in return. Draco felt as though he had been lifted off his feet and flung into the nearest wall, and even seeing that he was standing still and the machine’s white fireballs had spun towards him did nothing to contradict the impression.  
  
The light flickered and danced about them, and for a moment, Draco had an image of white paths stretching away in front of him, the obverse of the Dark paths, bounding up unfamiliar hills and down into valleys that made his soul ache, with and _for_ all the things that he didn’t know.   
  
Then that particular image vanished, and Draco staggered back, released from the arch. But not from the hands of Harry and Pansy, who moved with him.  
  
 _You wished to know._  
  
The voice blistered Draco’s skull. He raised his hands to cover his ears, even though he knew the uselessness of the gesture, and Harry and Pansy’s hands came with him, still attached to his arms.  
  
 _This is knowledge._  
  
And the scalding flash, this time, _was._  
  
Draco had poor eyesight, and snakes wrapped around every inch of his body, and the memory and sympathy of the hydra thrumming in his bloodstream. And he had a lightness on his feet, and instinctive awareness of every exit in the room, and a frightened, furious concern that made his blood dance. Because he was Harry and Pansy and himself, and in that moment, he knew everything about them, though those sensations were the only ones that he could come out of the memory with.  
  
That one glimpse, of something so stupefying that Draco fought bitterly to hang onto it, knowing as he did that the battle drove it further away, because it was a glimpse into a reality that could only be enjoyed, not comprehended—  
  
And then Harry and Pansy’s hands fell away from his arms, and they stood separated before the machine, which looked exactly as it had before, with the white fireballs buzzing through the arch and each one being consumed, or touched, or changed, by the light that burst through the arch when they did. Draco licked dry lips and touched his own shoulders, convincing himself they were without the weight of snakes, the burden of old concerns.  
  
“The next time you want to do something like that, Draco,” Pansy said, flatly, “leave me out of it.”  
  
Draco raised an eyebrow. “But now we have proof that there is indeed Dark magic in use in the Department of Mysteries. Forced transfer into another person’s perceptions is illegal under the same laws that regulate Legilimency.”  
  
“I never heard that.” Harry’s eyes were bright, and he stood rubbing his arms as though he thought that he needed to grow an extra protective coat of scales because of what Draco had done to him. Draco sniffed and shook his head. He couldn’t deny enjoying himself, but he thought he should wait to express that, because Harry and Pansy would probably both get angry at him.  
  
“There are advantages to knowing the Ministry’s laws about Dark Arts,” Draco said, and smiled when Harry glanced at him. “Our exact description of the machine and the way that the fireballs float through it will gain us a lot of credibility.”  
  
“Fireballs?” Harry stared at the silver arch and shook his head. “I thought they were pieces of paper.”  
  
“That’s because you’re unobservant, and you have to try and become more cautious,” Pansy said, and turned towards the door into the next room, a solid sheet of steel without a keyhole or lock. Draco saw her eyes light up, and smiled again. This was Pansy’s specialty, finding a way into places that no one wanted her to go. “Draco?” she added, glancing back at him.  
  
“We’re going that way,” Draco said, and watched as she touched her robes and closed her eyes. He could feel Harry watching beside him, too, hungry for another sight of the Dark Arts even though he might deny it.  
  
The golden keys leaped off Pansy’s robes and began to rotate around her, making her the center of a spinning whirlwind of loops and whorls and straight shafts. Pansy took a single step forwards, her hand extended towards the door. For a moment, Draco thought he saw a Dark path opening in front of her, a road that slanted sharply downwards and which Draco wasn’t familiar with. Well, she had advanced further in her study of certain kinds of magic than Draco had, and it wasn’t surprising that she would know things he didn’t.  
  
With someone else, he would have felt the intense hunger to know, to explore further. But he had just had a glimpse of what it was like inside Pansy’s mind, and besides, if he ever wondered what a particular spell felt like for the person casting it, she would tell him.  
  
Draco would have felt the same way about Parseltongue, to be honest, if he trusted Harry to know and understand all his own sensations and to explain them accurately. But he didn’t, so he clenched his fingers down into his palms now and awaited the result.   
  
Pansy opened her lips and blew out gently in front of her. As she had explained it to Draco once, this breath connected her and the path, and the path ran to an answer, rather than to a physical location like the one that Draco had used to lead them into the Department of Mysteries. It was very quiet here, and the way that the air tingled around them made Draco all the more aware of the sweat under his arms and the flashes from the machine behind them.  
  
And the soft, subtle hissing that rode Harry’s breath as his lungs moved beside Draco.  
  
Then Pansy stuck her hand out, and the right key dropped into it. Draco knew it was the right key even before Pansy moved in and laid the key against the door, because Pansy had been doing this for a long time and her magic wouldn’t fail her now. And her talent was to find the way in.  
  
The door trembled, the steel rippling as though the key was a lure Pansy was using to pull a fish to the surface. Then it solidified, and the key sank into the surface and clicked. Pansy opened her eyes and turned her head to smile at them.  
  
“Here we are,” she said, and turned the key.  
  
The door opened. Harry was shaking his head as he stepped forwards to accompany Draco through it. Draco touched his shoulder, and smiled when Harry glanced back at him. “What do you think of the Dark Arts now?” he whispered.  
  
“They’re dazzling,” Harry whispered back.  
  
In the face of that tribute, Draco found it hard to say anything else. But he touched Harry’s hand, to feel the scales, as they went through the door, and from the way Harry nodded back, he’d understood.  
  
*  
  
This room shone so much that Harry found himself shading his eyes as he stepped into it. At first, he thought they were standing in the middle of an immense prism made for focusing light. Then he thought that they were floating in an ice cube.  
  
When he could finally blink away some of the afterimages and focus on the walls and floor instead of the spots drifting in midair, then he understood. The floor was one mirror, and the walls, in the shape of a hexagon, were each a mirror in return. The sheer effect of the focused light—though he couldn’t see a source of that light—made it hard to see their reflections, and every movement they made seemed to throw up a new spark.  
  
Malfoy’s hand had risen at once to his collar. Harry, squinting at him, wondered if he sensed a trap in this room that Harry didn’t. Harry knew that his Dark Arts abilities were more focused on living creatures, but still, he thought that he would have felt something dangerous enough to provoke that expression on Malfoy’s face.  
  
Malfoy breathed smoothly and quietly as he looked around, his eyes shifting from wall to wall. Harry followed his gaze. There was his reflection, and Malfoy’s, and Parkinson’s—   
  
Then Harry’s eyes shot back to his own reflection. It showed the white serpent coiled around his throat, something that no ordinary mirror in the Manor had done. And there was a blue-black shadow spreading out behind him, too, something that Harry hadn’t summoned and which wasn’t there when he turned his head.  
  
“Malfoy,” he murmured, at the same time as Pansy said, “Draco!”  
  
“I see it,” Malfoy said, and then gave a smile sharp enough to cut. “Them.” He whipped his head out from beneath his collar and tossed whatever weapon he’d concealed there at the mirror. Harry thought he would try to break it, and wondered uneasily if that was a good idea, if that might not rather let the reflections free.  
  
Instead, the weapon broadened out in the air as it flew, and Harry found it as difficult to see as he had the reflections when they first stepped into the room. A whip, a question mark of starry night, it was the blue-black that the hydra had looked like, and it unfolded further and further as it flew, until it hit the mirror that reflected Harry’s serpents and that spreading shadow.  
  
Part of the glass vanished, a cut in the exact shape of the flying thing appearing in it. There were no cracks around it, but Harry could see the shadow in the mirror and their reflections turn to look. Those reflections suddenly wore looks of apprehension that Harry knew had nothing to do with their own faces.  
  
Out of the cut came spiders.  
  
Or, at least, Harry preferred to think of them as spiders. They had jointed legs and dark bodies and they crawled like spiders. He couldn’t count the exact number of their legs, and he didn’t know what the nets they dragged behind them, gleaming like spun sapphires, were made of. But he didn’t need to. Unlike Malfoy, he didn’t have the craving for _that_ much information, and he had learned all he wanted to know about Malfoy’s mind for the present from that machine in the other room.  
  
The spiders filed towards the reflections, and the reflections turned and fled. That didn’t seem to bother the spiders, who never hurried their pace. Hairs bristled out from their legs, and dug into the mirror, carving long, shallow, empty grooves as they walked after the reflections, and the darkness spread back along those grooves into the original cut.  
  
After that, the darkness began to spill out of the channels, flowing over the glossy surface as though they were a river flooding the land. As Harry stared, fascinated, the places where the reflections could run became smaller and smaller, and then the spiders closed in on the staring faces left in the one tiny triangle of glass. Harry caught a glimpse of spider legs shearing off their skin before he turned his own face away.  
  
“There,” Malfoy said, when moments had passed and the spiders had turned and crowded back into the darkness at the hole they’d come from in the beginning, although the whole mirror was dark now and Harry thought they could have had their choice about which part of it to crawl through. “I thought the Unspeakables would try to use a mirror as a trap. This is the way I chose to deal with it.”  
  
He arched an eyebrow at Harry and turned away. Harry shrugged and followed. He thought they had plenty of evidence that the Unspeakables used Dark magic now, but he knew what Malfoy probably wanted to find: a real artifact that they could bring back with them. The machine they had seen in the other room was too big to transport, and so were the hydra and the mirrors.  
  
“Pansy, if you would?” Malfoy asked, stepping back and gesturing towards the mirrored wall that faced the one they had come in.  
  
“Shows what you know,” Parkinson said, with a faint sniff that Harry thought was her way of trying to hide how impressed she was with Malfoy’s mirror trick. “As if that _needs_ to be the entrance.” She moved towards the wall next to the darkened mirror instead, and began working in her storm of keys without turning her head to look at the blackness.  
  
Harry took a deep breath, and Malfoy glanced at him. “How long did it take you to put that piece of magic together?” Harry asked, nodding at the dark mirror and forcing himself not to think about how their reflections had been chased and cringed. Those reflections would have harmed them if they could, and the Unspeakables were massive hypocrites, pushing for control of the Dark Arts while using them themselves.  
  
“About three days,” Malfoy said. “And the research took longer than that.”  
  
Harry nodded slowly. “Do you think that’s going to be a problem if we have to seriously defend your house? I mean, if the battle moves fast and our defenses can only move slowly?”  
  
Malfoy blinked, and his eyes and face glowed. “Now you’re thinking like a strategist,” he said approvingly. “But no, I don’t really think that will happen. I’ve been planning for this day for a long time, and I have a store of such enchanted objects and weapons built up. I’m not afraid that we’ll lose.”  
  
Harry hesitated. Then he said, “Good. Good. That was all I wanted to know.”  
  
Malfoy’s eyes laughed at him, but he swept a bow and said, “I live to serve. My goals and my allies.”  
  
His eyes lingered on Harry, but before Harry could respond, Parkinson gave a shrill scream from the other side of the room. Harry whirled around, already berating himself for not watching her back. But he had assumed that her competence, after the first door he had seen her open, was too great for her to need that.  
  
Parkinson retreated towards the center of the mirror room with her arms folded over her head. Rising like a wave beyond the open door were cobras like the one that Ron had wielded against Malfoy in hospital, all of them hissing, all of them aimed straight for Harry and his allies.  
  
And none of them responded when Harry called out to them in Parseltongue.   
  
A moment later, they were drowned in writhing bodies.


	16. Writhe in the Dance

  
Draco gasped against the scales muffling his mouth. He reached up to strike away the heads that were striking at him. The only advantage they had right now, he thought, backing frantically away, was that the cobras distracted each other. There were too many of them to start up a clear or coherent charge.  
  
 _Small mercies._  
  
But those mercies had kept him from dying of venom so far, and had even saved Pansy from being overwhelmed, so he had to be grateful for them.  
  
He tucked in his hands close to his sides and rolled towards the back of the room, towards the darkened mirror. It should be quiescent now. If anything else came out of it, it would be friendly towards the one who had caused that darkness.  
  
Draco thought.  
  
He turned his head back and saw that Pansy had leaped up and attached herself to a wall with Sticking Charms on her hands, the sort of clever thing she would tend to think of. But Harry still stood in the way of the snakes, and his head was almost hidden under the silver bodies. The white serpent whipped back and forth, a soft, steady hiss coming to Draco’s ears, but he knew that it couldn’t hold all of them back.  
  
 _He’s relying on his Parseltongue to command them, and it’s not working,_ Draco thought a moment later, and shook his head. This was why every Dark wizard should have a specialization outside the magic he felt most comfortable with. That magic wouldn’t work in all circumstances.  
  
Draco closed his eyes and reached out to the memory of a Dark path that he had had to conquer by himself, in silence and in freezing fear. His wand rose without his willing it, pulled by that memory, pulled by the magic that surged through his veins at once. Dark Arts were no more sentient than any other branch of magic, but they gave the wizard power, and affected his will. Be strong enough in the first place to master them, and it could _feel_ as if the spells were crushing each other up your wand, _seem_ as if there was something beyond you that wanted you to cast them.  
  
“ _Timor_ ,” Draco whispered.  
  
The air in front of him turned a dull, silvery black. A moment later, the magic blasted out of him and enveloped the cobras, parting on either side of Harry, the way Draco had wanted it to. That was the thing about Dark Arts spells, too, Draco thought, panting as he leaned his head back on the wall; they responded more to the caster’s will, as long as he was strong enough to control them. He would have had no choice but to inflict everyone in front of him with the consequences of the spell if he was a Light wizard. This way, only the snakes should be affected.  
  
 _Unless Harry is enough like a snake to feel the pulses of spells directed at them…_  
  
Draco shook away the suspicion. He didn’t think so. He had very clearly thought about affecting only the cobras, and his will wouldn’t fail under such a challenge. He waited and watched, though, wand twitching in his hand with the eagerness to cast again if necessary.   
  
*  
  
 _You should flee, brother.  
  
_ Harry thought he smiled, but it was hard to tell. So many scales were rubbing around him, so many fangs were looking for a purchase somewhere in his hair, which Harry had hardened into streams of hanging scales, or on his skin, which Harry had toughened to thin rock with scales beneath _it._ Not even the tiniest of muscles could move freely anymore.  
  
 _That would have been good advice some time ago,_ Harry said, and tried to see the white serpent. No, he couldn’t; a cobra was pressing his eyelids shut, striking again and again at his hands. Sooner or later, Harry thought, the fangs would puncture the scales that he didn’t know how to control very well, after all. _I can’t now.  
  
I am sorry, brother._  
  
Harry wished he had a hand free to reach up and strike the white serpent. _It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known what was behind that door, and I would have come even if you did. I thought I could control them._  
  
He never knew what the white serpent would have replied. Both of them were too distracted by the violent shiver that ran through the piled cobras at that moment, and the low, insistent whining that began to surge up their throats. Harry blinked. It was like standing inside a vibrating gong.  
  
 _Magic. The cold one._ The white serpent slid down the side of Harry’s neck; he could tell it apart from the cobras because it still felt warmer, and familiar to his skin in a way that none of the others did. _He cast a spell.  
  
What does it do?  
  
I cannot tell. Be silent and let me—_  
  
Then the cobras slid away from them in a mad rush, piling back towards the door they’d come out of. Harry and the white serpent stood alone in the middle of the floor, with Harry able to raise his hands and open his eyes again. He turned his head and saw Malfoy reclining against the dark mirror, his eyes so brilliant with fire that they could have outshone the silver machine in the next room.  
  
Harry smiled at him. Malfoy was reflected in the mirrors that still shone clear, too, and he looked as good there, as proud and perfect and poised on the edge. Not unruffled, but Harry was coming to accept that that wasn’t an ideal for this new Malfoy, anyway, the way it seemed to have been for the old one.  
  
Harry opened his mouth to say thank you, then shut it as he caught sight of himself in the mirrors that curved closest to the door into the other room.  
  
He was covered, head to foot, in an armor of gold-brown scales. His hair really had turned into spun strands of scales, the way that he had commanded it to. His fingers danced, long and worm-like, with small eyes and snapping fangs at the ends of them. Harry hadn’t felt that change, hadn’t known it was happening. His legs had become a sort of squat pillar, halfway between haunches and the thick coil that a great constrictor would use when lifting its head to swallow prey.  
  
Harry turned his head away. He could bear a lot of things after being saved from death, he thought, and maybe this should have been one of them. But—  
  
 _There is a difference between accepting something,_ the white serpent said, draping himself through Harry’s hair-strands and setting them rattling, _and accepting every consequence of it the first time you see them._  
  
Harry willed breath back into his lungs, and then started to withdraw the scales on skin and hair, the eyes and fangs on his fingers, the leglessness that had begun to consume his body. If he accepted it, then it was his, to use or reject or use for a time and then place back into a mental cupboard. That was what he had to remember.  
  
“Potter.” Parkinson’s voice, low and neutral from the side. “You survived the cobras?”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said, then had to pause and refashion his jawline a bit so he could speak in English. “Yes. My skin was too tough for them to bite through, and then there were too many of them searching for an opening, and they only struck at each other.” He looked up at her, and found her clinging to the wall.  
  
Her eyes darted to his, then away, avoiding looking at him. “I’m glad that you weren’t bitten,” she said.  
  
Harry knew the thickness in her voice from hearing it from Ron and Hermione, even before they saw his fingers shorten and retreat. Disgust.  
  
 _It doesn’t matter,_ he reminded himself. _She’s still your ally, and she’s saved you, too._ He made himself turn away from her and face Malfoy.  
  
Malfoy, who still watched him with half-lidded, burning eyes, and who had dropped down from the mirror to walk towards Harry, as though he was drawn despite himself by the glow of the scales under his skin.  
  
Harry concentrated on that, on the desire in Malfoy’s eyes, and said, “Thank you. What was the spell that you used on them?”  
  
*  
  
 _Would he wind those coils around me? Would he use those fingers to tease me in ways that I couldn’t take?_  
  
Draco had to remind himself of where they were, and that Pansy was still watching them with wide eyes, even if those eyes _were_ halfway hidden under her hair. He bowed a little to Harry and said, “The spell was one I learned on the Dark paths, a spell of fear. It made them feel the same terror that I did walking that particular path.”  
  
Harry smiled. “I see.” His face was becoming more human, losing the angles, the bluntness, the scales under the skin. Draco reached out and brushed his fingers down Harry’s cheek, and knew it was the best thing he could have done. Harry relaxed, and looked more human than ever. “It was effective, thanks. You’re a better Dark wizard than I am.”  
  
Draco smiled back. “Only for the moment,” he murmured, and he and Harry stared at each other until Pansy cleared her throat loudly.  
  
“We can’t use that room,” Pansy said. “And you already have a cobra that belonged to the Unspeakables, so I’m not sure that we need one of them to make convincing evidence. So where do we go now?”  
  
Draco tilted his head towards his friend, gratifying her, at the same time as he gratified Harry by not taking his eyes off him. Of such delicate compromises were leaders made. Draco couldn’t believe the Dark Lord had never learned that. “We find one of the offices of a high Unspeakable agent, and retrieve paperwork from it, and an artifact, that proves that they specialize in the study of the Dark Arts.”  
  
Pansy choked. “Oh, yes, _that’s_ a simple plan,” she said, when she could speak. Draco finally looked away from Harry to see her climbing down from the wall, shaking her head at him. She carefully kept her gaze away from Harry, which was something that Draco intended to tackle her about in a few days’ time. “One that I applaud for how straightforward and easy it is.”  
  
“I’m glad you approve,” Draco said, and held out his arm to Harry while Pansy was still spluttering. “Shall we?”  
  
He led Harry towards the mirror opposite the one that Pansy had opened into the cobra room, while Pansy trailed behind them. Harry was holding himself rigid with what was probably a multitude of emotions, but Draco knew that one of them must be delight at the easy way that Draco touched him.  
  
Well, it should be. Or else Draco was a lesser diplomatist than he thought himself.  
  
“I already felt around for a door there,” Pansy said sharply when Draco reached out and skimmed his fingers down the glass. “There’s nothing, and you _know_ that you can trust my senses for what is and isn’t there.”  
  
“I know,” Draco said. “But just as the Unspeakables think that there’s no door into the room with the hydra where we appeared, you think there’s none here.” He turned and smiled at Harry. “There a Dark path that leads into the smaller parts of the Department. It’s one that I never mastered, and which Pansy hasn’t, either. This is your first test beyond the path with the Hanging Tree, Harry. Are you ready?”  
  
*  
  
Harry stared at Malfoy. How could he ask him that when some parts of his body were still melting back into shape?  
  
 _Because you sing with power,_ the white serpent told Harry, tickling his ear with his tongue. _And the cold one has more faith in you than do in yourself._  
  
That was true, but Harry didn’t think it a good thing, at the moment. He tried to think past his memory of the disgust in Parkinson’s eyes, and the way that his skin still smarted from the withdrawal of the scales beneath it, and met Malfoy’s eyes. “No one’s mastered it. Why do you think I should, when I’m such an amateur, instead of you doing it?”  
  
“Because you should see the path’s guardians,” Malfoy said, which was no kind of an answer, and he reached out and tore the air open.  
  
Harry stiffened when the scent flooding through that small gap reached his nostrils. Rich, and salty, and so loaded with—with _rocks_ that it made his head ache. The white serpent twisted his neck down in its direction and bobbed it slowly, flickers of light chasing the golden traceries in his scales. _There are snakes there, brothers. Great ones. It is no wonder that none of them wanted to walk this path._  
  
Harry panted, his throat thick with excitement. He could feel the split in his tongue that always seemed to be there now widening, splitting it further. He tried to hold that back, tried to hold back the eagerness to charge in, and turned to glance at Malfoy. Malfoy had no expression on his face, the way he sometimes did, but Harry thought it was one of his more genuine neutral facades this time, that there was really nothing to be excited about.  
  
“How sure are you that this path leads into the offices of one of the people we want?” Harry demanded.  
  
“Oh.” Malfoy’s tongue could have done credit to a Parselmouth himself, the way he flicked it out and then pulled it back in. “Quite sure.”  
  
Harry nodded. Malfoy, he knew, wouldn’t make that kind of reassurance without some proof that at least satisfied _him_ , because if he ran Harry into the mouth of danger, he stood losing both an ally and an ally’s trust. And Malfoy, for all his risk-taking, couldn’t value proof of the Unspeakables using Dark Arts more than he valued the chance to study a Parselmouth.  
  
Harry stepped forwards and braced his hands on either side of the doorway. The slit in the air began to beckon, to pull at him, less like wind tugging on his clothes than the smooth gradient of a throat swallowing him down.  
  
Harry swallowed in response, darted out his tongue so that the edge of it touched the edge of the white serpent’s tongue, and leaped forwards.  
  
The path beneath his feet writhed up and down, coiling around and back, and Harry remembered Malfoy’s warnings about what would happen if he strayed off it. He fixed his eyes forwards, and had the white serpent watch sideways, for the twistings, and when the path snapped back towards him, he leaped onto it and stamped down with his feet, with his magic, with the serpents wrapped about his legs, _forcing_ it straight.  
  
That earned him a hiss, a wash of Parseltongue that was far Darker and more complex than anything he’d tried to understand so far, and the slow, wrathful turning of a great neck in front of him.   
  
Harry stared. Then he understood, while his heart sang furious cadences in his ears.  
  
The path he walked was the back of one giant snake, not a simple dirt road the way the others had been.  
  
The snake surged up, with three heads like a Runespoor but the colors of a basilisk, and began to turn those heads towards him. Harry ran straight towards its neck, hands flailing out ahead of him, and closing on scales. The edges of scales, standing out from the neck, as though dislodged by the unsuccessful strike of some other predator. Harry didn’t know that for certain, but he knew they would help him now. He swung up and then down and out with his weight, making the scales bend.  
  
The snake screamed. Harry could translate the pain in that hiss, but no words. Two scales came away in Harry’s hand, and he heard the viscous blood begin to run.  
  
So much for the plan to use the jutting scales like reins to guide the snake. And the blood would make his footing all the slipperier.   
  
But that didn’t mean much, couldn’t be allowed to mean much.  
  
Harry sprang high, and unfolded snakes from his legs and chest as he went, conjuring more with a stroke of his arm through the air and a stroke of his mind inside his head. He commanded them to swarm, and they did, around the great snake’s neck and heads, overlapping each other like bracelets.  
  
Or like manacles.  
  
Every time a new chain of snakes reached the earth beneath the guardian, which must be the path itself, and stabbed in, one of the three heads became less able to move. The serpent figured out what he was doing soon enough, and froze its heads in place while it began to twist and lunge with the rest of its body, trying to shake him off _that_ way.  
  
 _Hold him,_ Harry told the snakes, and then pulled the white serpent off his head and set him gently on the place where the guardian’s necks joined his body. _Command them. I have something else that I need to do._  
  
 _What is that, brother?_ The white serpent flicked out his tongue to touch Harry’s leg. _You know that we cannot do this without you.  
  
I know that. _ Harry flicked one hand down to trace his fingers along the white snake’s head. _And I know that I am going to help you. But I can’t help in the form I’m in._  
  
For the first time, surrounded by the cold glory and might of the Dark paths, Harry closed his eyes and slipped free of his guise in skin and human bone, heading for the form that it seemed he had wanted to merge into since he first began accepting his Parseltongue and speaking it rather than English.  
  
The change began with his legs, freezing them together. It had been terrifying in hospital; it was liberating now that Harry knew he was the one who had begun it, rather than the other way around. His legs became long and soft, flexible and thin as whips, and _braided_ together. He knew that was necessary, that he needed it for the moment when he would have a massive tail, but it was still an unsettling sensation to feel.  
  
From there, the transformation rose straight up, his arms braiding around his body the same way, coils locking them in place, his muscles thickening out and rigidifying, his neck gaining mass from the shoulders that melted upwards, and his face sticking out, soft as warm butter for a moment. Harry flicked his tongue loose, and now it was long, matching his current size, and his shape.  
  
He had no idea why the scales that shone under his skin, and the temptation to change as he just had, marked him out for a constrictor rather than a venomous snake, as his fangs did. But it was for him to work with his magic, not question it, right now.  
  
He slid softly and easily to the side, and wrapped himself around the guardian’s lashing tail. Then he joined his head with his tail, and, for the first time, _squeezed._  
  
The guardian went still at once, which only allowed Harry to bring more coils into play. It was like being wrapped in armor that he could then wrap around someone else, Harry found. And the softer it was, the more he could play with it, the more he _wanted_ to play with it. He braided himself in intricate patterns, and still there seemed to be no end to his body. Squeeze and squeeze, and meanwhile his conjured serpents were doing the same thing to the three heads in the front of the body, commanded by the white snake.  
  
The guardian stopped moving, at last, and the three heads lay along the real Dark path as it hissed to Harry, _You command._  
  
Harry lifted his head and turned his golden-brown body in the direction of the guardian’s heads. He knew he should turn back into a human, so that he could make sure he walked the real path and thus conquered it, but he was reluctant. It seemed far more natural to stay an anaconda than to return to two-legged form. _My command is that you show us the way._ He flowed back up onto the snake’s body, and the white serpent came looping and dancing to meet him.   
  
_The others listened to me! They listened!  
  
Of course they did. _ Harry wondered for a moment exactly how independent the white snake was of him, and whether it was more than an extension of himself after all, and whether he should give it a name. Then he decided that he had more pressing things to worry about, such as how he was going to walk the Dark path in anaconda form.  
  
He tried to change back, to imagine human hands and legs, but his coils only settled around him in firmer armor. He sighed, which came out as a contentless hiss. Well. Whether it was magical exhaustion or something else, he couldn’t become a man again right now. But the snake that lived here as a guardian would have to have some means of safely negotiating the Darkness.  
  
Harry decided the simplest solution was to ride the three-headed beast for the moment, because it would know the way. He moved back and hissed the commands that let the three heads up. _Show us the way. Guide us there. And let your body trail the outlines of the path._ If he watched carefully enough, then he thought he should be able to negotiate the path after he had let the three-headed snake go.  
  
The vipers and cobras and others he had used to assist in the capture flowed back over him, but the white snake took pride of place, braided twice around Harry’s thick neck. The giant Runespoor, as Harry was going to think of it until he had a reason to think otherwise, hesitated and glanced back at him once with the middle head, while the left and right continued gazing ahead. _The outlines?  
  
Don’t reach beyond them if you don’t want to, _ Harry said, tasting the fear that lingered on the air. _But I need you to take us to the end of this path._  
  
Whatever other arguments one could make when one was a giant Runespoor-basilisk crossbreed, this snake decided to hold them in reserve. It began to crawl, instead, and Harry traveled to the edge of the vast trunk so that he could watch the tail as it whipped back and forth, the curves it traced, the way it rippled and flowed.  
  
On and on, and this path was longer than he had thought it was when he listened to Malfoy talking about it. He wondered again if this counted as walking the path, mastering it, and how literal the metaphors were here.  
  
Then the Runespoor paused and probed ahead with two of its heads, and said, _This is the boundary. Beyond this, I cannot go.  
  
My thanks, _ Harry said, and flowed to the front and down the side of the left neck, ignoring the soft and startled hiss behind him. Who said that Dark wizards were lacking in courtesy? Malfoy seemed to value it, and his was the only example that Harry really had to follow, unless he wanted to go with Parkinson’s and feel disgust at himself, or Voldemort’s and try to kill himself.  
  
 _That was what the Healers wanted me to do. Thought I would do._  
  
Harry shook that off, and touched the boundary with his nose and his tongue, then shoved ahead. It ripped in front of him the way the air had when Malfoy gestured it aside, back behind him somewhere, and Harry tumbled into a well-lit office with a soft fire flickering on the hearth. The desk was spread with paperwork, and currently unoccupied.  
  
The white serpent came with him, and so did the other snakes, spreading out at once in case of an ambush. But there truly was no one there, although the door stood ajar. The white serpent touched Harry’s nose with his and guided Harry’s own much larger head gently around to point at the desk.  
  
Something sat there, shimmering purple and silver. It looked like a crown, and wasn’t. It looked like a stone, and wasn’t. But the sense of kinship that flowed from it, kinship with the darkness behind Harry, was unmistakable.  
  
 _We did it,_ the white serpent said, or Harry said, their voices mingling and chiming. _We made the way through._  
  
And when Harry sent the vipers in, to pick up the Dark artifact and the vast majority of the paperwork on the desk’s surface, he had done it in another sense. Chosen his side. Come too far to turn back now.  
  
He was a Dark wizard, made and embodied, and with all the evidence he needed to prove that more of his kind lurked inside the Ministry.  
  
 _After all,_ he thought, when he had shut the door behind them with a twitch of his tail and once again rode the giant Runespoor through the darkness, _if it’s Dark to have a magical gift you never asked for born inside you, how much Darker is it to be working with an artifact that you had a choice in picking up?_  
  
Other people might not see it like that. Yet.  
  
Harry, and Malfoy and Parkinson, would make them.


	17. Striking From Safety

  
Harry winced as he bent down and touched his pelvis. He had changed back from the snake form not long after he’d rejoined Malfoy and Parkinson in the mirror room, and Malfoy had praised his capture of the artifact and Parkinson had flinched back from him as expected. And then Malfoy had torn open the Dark path again and brought them out of the Department. They had gained memories, paperwork, an artifact. Though the Unspeakables would move almost immediately to cover up the loss when they found out about it, they didn’t know yet. For the moment, Harry and his allies could rest.  
  
But _damn_ , Harry hadn’t realized how much crushing his legs out of shape into coils and then splitting them back would hurt. It was the next morning, and they still ached.  
  
“An owl brought me the first threat!”  
  
Harry started. He was bending down in front of the mirror in the bathroom attached to his suite, and Malfoy was standing behind him, waving the letter, his eyes bright and merry, seeming to ignore Harry’s nakedness.   
  
“I knew the Unspeakables wouldn’t want to make a public fuss, but they can’t contain themselves, either,” Malfoy announced, flopping down on the couch that stood along the wall of the bathroom and pushing Harry’s clothes out of the way. “They’ll be sending letters like this to all the Dark wizards in Britain, implying subtly that they know it was them—although of course it won’t have been most of them—and trying to threaten them into giving the artifact up. I only received one by coincidence. They don’t know yet.” He gazed at the letter as if deciding whether or not to frame it. “What do you think? Should I let them know so soon, or make them wait and work for it?”  
  
“Malfoy,” Harry said.  
  
Malfoy glanced up at him, waiting, then sighed. “That’s just my name, and not an answer,” he pointed out patiently.  
  
The white serpent, lounging on the tiles that were still warm from the splashing of Harry’s shower that morning, turned his head a little. _Do you want me to bite him? I don’t think I should, and besides, I’m so comfortable here.  
  
Don’t bother, _Harry hissed back, then faced Malfoy again. “I’m not dressed yet,” he said.   
  
Malfoy spent a minute more waiting, then placed the letter carefully on the counter and stood. “I know that,” he explained. “When I realized that you were still in the bathroom, I thought it would prove an advantage rather than otherwise.” He stepped up beside Harry and stroked his hand down Harry’s flank, lingering especially on the bone of his hip. “Of course, if you want me to go, I can go,” he added generously as Harry squeaked.  
  
Harry closed his eyes and thought furiously. “No, I don’t want you to go,” he said at last.  
  
“I hoped you wouldn’t,” Malfoy said, and went on stroking and waiting. The touches of his fingers on Harry’s skin sparked more response than the scales of a snake sliding there would have.  
  
 _I like that,_ the white serpent announced, and slid out of the room with a languorous motion. _If you’re going to mate, I don’t have to watch over you. I already know what it looks like, and it’s not that interesting._  
  
Harry would have glared, but the way Malfoy was touching him _was_ interesting, at last for him, and he couldn’t quite get the breath into his lungs. He panted, while Malfoy held him there with nothing more than the tips of his fingers resting lightly on Harry’s hip. When he opened his eyes, Malfoy watched him with sparking eyes and his tongue peeking gently out from between his lips.  
  
“Well?” he asked.  
  
Harry made a noise that sounded like a head hitting tile and reached for him.  
  
*  
  
This time, it was better, because Harry was naked.  
  
That meant Draco could see all the bands of sliding, glowing scales under his skin, encircling his wrists and running in long strips up his arms to his shoulders. Beneath the skin, but so warm, so thick, so _enticing._ And when Draco bent and licked Harry’s wrist, he could taste a difference there from ordinary human skin, colder and rougher. Harry groaned and dragged Draco closer to kiss him.  
  
Draco had to shut his eyes and spend a moment concentrating when his tongue slipped into Harry’s mouth, so that he wouldn’t spend himself then and there. Harry’s tongue was _forked._ Draco hadn’t felt that before. He gasped through the first moments, and then became aware that he was grinding himself against Harry’s leg and Harry could probably figure out the reason.  
  
“You really _do_ like it exotic,” Harry murmured, and pulled back from Draco’s mouth, staring at him. The scales lay around his neck like a collar. His hair writhed and danced and drifted, not becoming serpents, not becoming ordinary hair. His hands reached out and slid down Draco’s arms, and he didn’t think it was his imagination that Harry’s fingers had shortened, that the nails felt more like small glassy lumps than ragged ones.  
  
“I like it,” Draco said. “I like you. I want you to fuck me.”  
  
From the way Harry actually flew across the bathroom , banging into the side of the shower, you would have thought that Draco had asked to harvest his organs for use in potions. His mouth hung open, unattractive except in the way that it revealed more of that dark throat and split tongue and burgeoning fangs, and the venom sacs were bulging beneath his cheeks once more. Draco knew that meant Harry felt threatened, but he didn’t much care. In fact, it was a help, in some ways, to see Harry so unnerved. It aroused Draco, and kept him from feeling as though Harry was completely in control. Draco reached down and began to unbutton his trousers, gently, slowly, not taking his eyes off Harry’s face as he did.  
  
“You’re mad,” Harry whispered, but his legs were shaking in a way that didn’t let him slide down, and he was hard. Draco let his gaze linger on Harry’s groin in appreciation for a long moment. His cock didn’t split or have scales or change form in any way to indicate his Parseltongue, but it was still a very nice one.  
  
“Why?” Draco shrugged, and his trousers and pants both slid to the floor at once, a modification he’d perfected during the days when he was still dating Blaise, who was so impatient that he would tear Draco’s clothes otherwise. “You’re acting as though I had asked you to penetrate me with a snake.”  
  
“I wouldn’t send any of my snakes into your filthy arse,” Harry hissed, and his tongue lashed out far enough that Draco could feel the impact of flecks of spittle on the bridge of his nose.  
  
Draco wiped them away, and grinned at Harry. “Well, lucky for you that there’s a shower here.” And he stepped past Harry and turned it on, ignoring the way that the water splashed on his shirt. The house-elves could clean that, while Draco himself would have to use _Reparo_ on any of the clothes that got torn.  
  
“Mad,” Harry repeated hollowly, but he was having a lot of trouble looking away from Draco’s chest now. Draco looked down. He was pleased himself with the muscles there, and their definition, and the way they flowed down towards the lean hollow of his hips, but he suspected that Harry was fixated on the scars that lay in the very center.  
  
Draco touched them and shrugged. “You used a Dark spell to make them,” he said. “That means I value them. And they should have been the first suggestion for me that you had the potential to become a Dark wizard. I wish I’d seen it at the time. You could have avoided wasting your life in the service of the Light, and I would have had a powerful protector and ally.”  
  
“I don’t know what to say,” Harry said, and stood there, looking foolish, while Draco tossed the wet shirt on the floor and stepped more fully into the shower. A simple wish adjusted the temperature of the water and the pounding nature of the spray, so that it hit and relaxed the muscles near his spine that had been injured by some of his dodging and rolling in the Department of Mysteries last night.  
  
“Come in, then,” he said to Harry, not opening his eyes to see if he would, while he stretched his legs out and jutted his hips forwards. Harry couldn’t miss the invitation, whether Draco spoke it in words or not. “And then come in me.” He turned his head, poised in the way that he knew made him look the most provocative, and waited.  
  
*  
  
Harry wanted to say that Malfoy could just go fuck _himself,_ as far as he was concerned, and then walk out the door.  
  
But the white serpent had left the room, and Harry was still naked, and Malfoy was waiting for him in the shoulder with his head turned and his hair tossed back in a way that made him glow. And Harry had become worse at resisting his temptations since he became a Dark wizard.  
  
 _I’ll still have to make sure that I don’t yield to too many,_ he thought, as he stepped into the shower. He didn’t need Malfoy to tell him that doing that would mean wandering off the Dark paths in search of the laughter that gibbered to the side of them, and losing his sanity in the pursuit of small spells that didn’t matter as much as the greater advantages he could otherwise gain.  
  
But he needed Malfoy to teach him what the back of his neck smelled like, and that he would moan when Harry slid his tongue down the bones of his spine, and that his hair smelled like his shampoo even when he hadn’t used any yet. Harry found himself sliding down, as though his legs had melted again, and kneeling behind Malfoy. As long as he had knees, he thought, he was safe.  
  
Malfoy gazed back over his shoulder at him, eyes heated and glowing like ashes. He widened his legs again, and waited. This time, Harry wasn’t as sure what he wanted. He put his hands on Malfoy’s arse.  
  
Malfoy let his head sag forwards, and hissed. Harry shivered. The hiss wasn’t quite a Parseltongue word, but close enough to arouse him.  
  
He kept moving his hands in slow circles, digging his fingers into taut flesh here and there, and wondered what the hell to say, to do. He had never been one for casual sex. Partially, of course, because there were a lot of people out there who would use him if they could, and partially because—well, he just hadn’t. It wasn’t him.  
  
But he once hadn’t been interested in Parseltongue, either. And he once had never thought he would _want_ to have sex with Malfoy, or argue with his best friends about being with him.  
  
He bent his head and let his tongue skim out, a fast, gentle lick over the very edges of Malfoy’s arse.  
  
Malfoy tilted slowly backwards, his motion flowing like candlewax, and caught himself with splayed arms on the wall of the shower above Harry’s head. He was shivering, and moaning quietly, urgently. Harry thought he could taste the depth of throat Malfoy was calling those sounds from, and he shivered back, his tongue shooting out again before he could stop it. He resisted the urge to turn his head and graze his fangs down Malfoy’s arse only because he didn’t know what venom he had on them at the moment.  
  
“Like that,” Malfoy said, and his voice had dropped, gone husky, upside-down, rich. “Like that. Oh, do it again. _Please_.”  
  
Power burst through Harry as he knelt there, fastening his legs—which still existed as human limbs—to the floor of the shower. He stretched out his hands and flexed them again, and became aware that Malfoy was holding his breath. He dug his fingers in like claws and opened his mouth to give Malfoy a blast of hot breath.  
  
He followed that with his tongue and, after thinking intensely about his poison for a moment, with his fangs. Malfoy moaned and shifted all the while, and spread his legs encouragingly, and bent back above Harry with a flexibility that he hadn’t known the little fucker had.  
  
 _Not so little,_ Harry thought, lifting one hand through Malfoy’s legs from behind to check.  
  
Malfoy trembled at his touch, and there was that power again, sparking deep, to the point that Harry could feel the jerk and flutter in the center of his chest. Harry wanted this to last forever. He backed away from Malfoy’s groin and returned to the tapping, teasing touches on his arse.  
  
“Please,” Malfoy said again, and shifted his legs further apart. Then he flung himself up in a single smooth motion, and before Harry knew it, Malfoy was standing upright again, his elbows braced against the shower walls to hold him there, his hands shooting down so that his own fingers pried at, and opened, the crack in his arse. “Like this. _Please_.”  
  
Harry half-closed his eyes, only to find that his eyelids had gone translucent and he could still see what Malfoy was doing. And that reminded him, again, that this was different, this wasn’t the world he had lived in for most of his life, and that he could do anything he liked, that Malfoy _wanted_ him to do anything he liked.  
  
He leaned forwards, and let his tongue out to play.  
  
*  
  
Draco had imagined that he knew what it would feel like to be with a Parselmouth. He had dreamed about that when he was studying them, even before he had rescued Harry from St. Mungo’s.  
  
But he hadn’t known, and now he was butting up sharply against the limits of his knowledge and finding out the truth, with even more delight than that usually entailed. He discovered the scrape of small, stubby nails against his back, the huff of laughter and breath through a triangular jawline, the dangerous touch of muffled fangs.  
  
The flick of a forked tongue.  
  
He yielded.  
  
He went liquid as Harry’s tongue stroked across his arse, as one corner of it found its way into a place that a human tongue could never have touched, as Harry’s fingers found their way in, and in, and in. His fingers hadn’t grown, Draco thought dreamily, unlike his tongue, so why did they seem longer than they had? But then he remembered some of the ways that Harry’s fingers had altered in the Department of Mysteries, and laughed aloud.  
  
Harry stilled.  
  
“That was encouragement,” Draco said breathily, and leaned forwards, bracing himself with one arm against the wall of the shower, because Harry seemed to have found his way to where Draco wanted him without more guidance than Draco had already offered. “Did you never feel it before?”  
  
“Not like this.”  
  
Distorted words, hissing sibilants, and Draco shuddered all the way up his spine. He stuck his arse out and wriggled it, and Harry finally understood what “encouragement” really meant. He paused, and Draco could feel him looking around.  
  
“The shampoo should work,” Draco whispered, and kept his head bowed, enjoying the slick feeling of the water sliding down his skin, the slick feeling of the tongue licking in and out on his arse, the slick feeling of Harry’s fingers working their way into him once he really did work out that he was _meant_ to do this.  
  
The more he explored, the more on edge Draco felt, the way he did when he was walking a new Dark path. He learned more and more, but what he learned could kill him if he took a wrong step. It was not _quite_ the same sensation, waiting for Harry to get over his hesitation, and explore further and deeper, but—  
  
 _It might kill me if he hesitates much longer._  
  
Then Harry groaned and licked along the edge of the spot where his fingers delved into Draco, and Draco cried out. Harry froze. Draco shook his head and hunched forwards, wriggling again.  
  
He didn’t have the words to speak, not with his mouth full of water and saliva, but luckily, Harry seemed to have finally grasped that you didn’t _need_ words to indicate a level of comfort with a certain idea. Draco heard him rise to his feet behind him. Then his hands fumbled over Draco’s shoulders, clumsy as the gripping forepaws of a dog.  
  
Draco arched his back, waited until he could hear Harry’s raspy breathing even over the pounding noise of the water, and then thrust himself backwards.  
  
He was lined up. Pleasure scalded him as he impaled himself, and Harry cried out hoarsely and said something in Parseltongue that Draco didn’t understand but which still made him shudder as if he was a snake being commanded.  
  
“You need to move,” he told Harry, his head drooping forwards so that he could support himself at last just by the pressure of his forehead on the tile. “There’s nothing I want more.”  
  
*  
  
Harry still moved delicately at first. Because Malfoy might want this, might understand this, but Harry wasn’t sure he did. It was only a few minutes ago that Malfoy had come into the bathroom talking about the owl he’d received from the Unspeakables, only last night that they’d raided the Department of Mysteries. Surely those things couldn’t be part of the same world as this. Surely it was never wise to sleep with a business partner.  
  
 _Be honest._  
  
The white snake had stayed cordially outside the shower, but Harry still knew the voice in his mind was a reflection of what he would have said. _Could_ he lie to himself? No, he really couldn’t. He knew as well as the snake did that this was something more than mere business.   
  
Mere business didn’t have someone rescuing him from hospital, the way that Malfoy had. Mere business didn’t mean that Harry would risk new Dark paths merely on Malfoy’s say-so and come back with important artifacts and Unspeakable secrets.  
  
Mere business didn’t feel this _good._  
  
That was the root of it, when Harry got to the root. He could surrender to pleasure, as he couldn’t to Darkness, as he couldn’t to Malfoy. He could lean in and throw his strength into the thrusts and give them what they both wanted, what they had been craving, though in Malfoy’s case it seemed to have been for years and in Harry’s case for a few days.  
  
As he thrust, as he pushed, as Malfoy pushed back and they fucked, though, it went deeper than that. Harry’s mouth spilled open, and the poison spilled out, and the tension that had been in his muscles and deeper than that joined it.  
  
So much pressure to be the perfect Auror, to never do anything wrong, to deny the Parseltongue when he had felt it growing in him. And how long had that been? Longer than he had confessed to Ron and Hermione. Longer than he had confessed to himself. Dreams full of snakes and days full of madness.  
  
Malfoy had saved him from that.  
  
Harry leaned in and whispered his thanks into Malfoy’s ear, although he didn’t know whether he whispered it in a language Malfoy could understand. From the way Malfoy reached back and gripped his hips, his fingers digging in and scratching thoughtful grooves, Harry didn’t think it mattered.  
  
They continued, tumbling through pleasure, through strikes of it that fried the nerves at the base of Harry’s spine, that touched his body in ways that made it shiver and shake, that made his head tilt back when the moment at last arrived. Sex had never been like this. He couldn’t remember the last time he had let _go_ when he came, his body falling, his soul spinning, his senses dissolving, because he trusted that someone would be there to catch him when he landed.  
  
And then he gasped, and opened his eyes, and realized that Malfoy was still trembling and waiting in front of him. Harry opened his mouth to invent excuses and apologies, to tell him that he had never fucked someone like this before and he was sorry that he was no good at it—  
  
Then he told himself that was stupid, and he reached down and gripped and stroked Malfoy, imagining his fingers shorter as he did so, so that it was more a blunt, smooth paw than a hand that held Malfoy.  
  
Malfoy gulped in air, and shrieked. Somewhere in the middle of that sound, in the loud pleasure that filled the shower, Harry felt him come, too, but it was more the hearing that confirmed for him that Malfoy wanted this.  
  
And it was okay if he wanted it, too.  
  
He didn’t have the strength to keep holding Malfoy up, even if that was what they both wanted, and the way Malfoy had sustained himself heroically all through the sex seemed to have faded. They slumped and slid down the wall, and Harry’s head drooped on Malfoy’s shoulder, and he didn’t pull out and away because he didn’t want to.  
  
Malfoy twisted his head back and kissed him. Harry kissed him, because he wanted to, and thought that he could get used to this, the gentle hand on his head, the fingers trailing along his jaw, the tapping on his lips so that Harry would open his mouth and Malfoy could touch Harry’s forked tongue with his own.   
  
*  
  
That had been the best sex of Draco’s life.  
  
Of course, it wouldn’t stay that way, because he fully intended to have more sex with Harry soon that would surpass that as the sun surpassed the stars. But for now, he could lean back against Harry and hum, and feel the tongue touching his, and the fingers on him, and know that he had what he wanted.  
  
And the water of the shower was still warm, too, and their minds were alike in drifting in languid contentment, along with their bodies. Draco shut his eyes and enjoyed a long moment of perfect ease.


	18. Smooth as Scales

  
“Why _did_ the Unspeakables send out this owl?”  
  
Draco leaned back in his chair at the dining room table and smiled as he watched Harry stare at the letter. They were out of the shower now, freshly washed and dressed, with the white serpent coiled around Harry’s arm. This time, Draco could make out every detail except for a slight fuzz of air and light down near the tail. It satisfied him in ways that he had never expected to be satisfied, and he shifted his weight and crossed his legs to remind himself that he couldn’t get hard again right now even if he wanted to.  
  
“Because they always do things like that as a first tactic,” Draco answered. “I got one a few years ago when Blaise successfully stole something from them. They hope that they can intimidate someone who might have done it for the thrill or on a bet to surrender it when they see how serious the Unspeakables are about it.”  
  
Harry looked up and blinked. “But they must have seen that this was a—professional job, for lack of a better word.”  
  
Draco smiled at him and put a bit of toast in his mouth. It had been browned to perfection by the elves, as always. “Do you know how difficult it can be to figure out the activities of Dark wizards without any knowledge of the Dark paths?” he murmured.  
  
Harry sat all the way up, nearly banging the white snake against his chair. The snake hissed at him and writhed up to Harry’s shoulder. Harry ignored him, too absorbed in his stare at Draco. “But you said they were Dark wizards!”  
  
“In the shallow definition,” Draco said.  
  
“Shallow as in the public thinks this about us but it’s not true?” Harry ruffled his hair, thinking. “Or shallow as in, I don’t know, shallow water?”  
  
“ _Very_ good,” Draco said, and if he used the languorous voice he’d also used immediately after the sex, making Harry flush bright and pretty pink was an advantage, not the other way around. “Yes. The Dark paths are the depths of the Dark Arts, when one commits to working them and taking the risks for the joy of it. But there are many people who only want to use the spells, and never delve enough into the theory to realize what lies behind it. They wade in the shallow water of the spells, and they’re more likely to go insane than the deep ones.”  
  
“You mean, the deep ones who don’t lose their balance on the paths,” Harry corrected him.  
  
Draco nodded. “Well, of course. I thought that went without saying, by this point in your studies.”  
  
Harry shuddered. “The way you so _casually_ refer to it. I risked my life that way in Hogwarts, maybe, but that was because I was young and didn’t know any better. You’re an adult and you _chose_ this way of life, after being a coward. Why?”  
  
Draco accepted the insult easily. He knew he had been a coward at one point, and he couldn’t even regret it, not when it had provided him with the motive to change himself, the burning shame that he wanted to grow away from in order to become his real self. “Because this is the road that led to where I wanted to be,” he said. “Braving the consequences, bracing myself, standing up to the siege of the magic and worse elements than a little light disapproval from the society around me.”  
  
“And I’m here because of the Parseltongue.” Harry’s hands moved up to stroke the white snake, down to stroke the black viper that had appeared wrapped around his waist.  
  
Draco arched his eyebrows. “Don’t you think it’s time to go further than that? See what else appeals to you, what else you might want to do with the Dark Arts, and specialize in, beyond shapeshifting and commanding snakes?”  
  
Harry frowned. “I thought that was what I would find out, the more Dark paths I went down.”  
  
“The artifact that you stole from the Unspeakables’ offices can help you with that,” Draco said smugly. “It’s only one of a number of its uses, and I haven’t plumbed all its secrets yet. But it would be a better use than what _they_ intended to make of it, I know that.”  
  
“All right,” Harry said, leaning over the table to rap Draco sharply on the back of the hand. “But how do _you_ know about it? You can’t have studied it for longer than they had it, unless they just got it.”  
  
“I was looking at it last night, after Pansy went home and you went to bed, of course,” Draco said, wondering that Harry couldn’t have anticipated his answer.  
  
“And then you came and had sex with me this morning.” Harry shook his head, a complicated expression on his face. “You don’t _stop_ , do you? Where in the world do you get all this energy?”  
  
“When you’re as much in love with life as I am right now, it’s not hard.” Draco shoved his chair back from the table and popped to his feet, as much to startle Harry as to hear the outraged gasps from the portraits behind him. Draco shook his head. There were so few of his ancestors who really understood him. But he had accomplished more in his short life so far than some of them had in their entire hundreds of years of lying and maneuvering to get close to a small gain. “Anyway. Do you want to come to my lab and see the artifact? We have a little time before we should invite Skeeter over and have her photograph us with the object and write about it for the loyal masses who still think of the Ministry as the opponent of Dark Arts.”  
  
Harry rose and held out his hand. Draco took it, wondering if he was cold or needed help getting out of his chair, only to have Harry bring Draco’s hand to his lips and scrape the forks of his tongue in the webbing between Draco’s fingers.  
  
“I’m glad that you came and got me out of hospital,” Harry said, softly, intensely, his eyes lingering on Draco’s face. “Thank you.”  
  
Draco bowed back in silence, and then turned and led Harry into the bowels of the Manor, his head high and his shoulders thrown back. It seemed that, even after all these years, attention from Harry bloody Potter could affect him as nothing else could. Not even Harry’s snake-like features.  
  
And wasn’t _that_ a revelation?  
  
*  
  
The venom sacs in Harry’s cheeks grew as soon as they stepped into Malfoy’s lab. This wasn’t the room he had seen before, with the intricate web of interconnected lines that showed Malfoy how many wizards in Britain had done Dark Arts, and where they all were. This was a smaller lab, with only two counters and two cauldrons set up opposite each other. At least, Harry thought they were cauldrons. They both had flaring, bell-like mouths, as if they were designed to be able to clap over small fleeing creatures.  
  
And a rainbow of glittering, actinic light stretched between them, in which hung, suspended, the object he had stolen from the Unspeakable’s desk.  
  
Harry stared at it. It was easier to look at now. The sharp sparks coursing down and dripping off it seemed to have melted a layer of its disguise. He could make out that it was a purple ring, or half a purple ring, bright as the inner core of a geode, embedded into a darker stone. Malfoy held up his wand and flicked it, and the object rotated, showing Harry that it was reflective on the bottom.  
  
“How do I use it?” Harry asked. He felt the same sharp shiver coursing down his spine that he had sometimes felt when approaching a particularly intriguing Auror case, and had to smile. At least he knew that this new career could offer some of the same excitements and dangers as the old one.   
  
“Stand where I’m standing,” Malfoy said, and moved aside from a particular patch of lab floor almost directly beneath the thing. Harry stepped onto it, and tried to ignore the fact that it was painted with an X, and that the X was red. The white snake had risen and was staring at the object, flicking out his tongue, but not hissing.  
  
“Now,” Malfoy said, “you need to hold the image of one of the Dark paths you’ve conquered in your mind, and imagine it opening in front of you and guiding you down the purple ring, overlapping it, into the heart of the stone.”  
  
“How in the world did you discover _that_?” Harry muttered, even as he began to focus.  
  
“It’s a common technique to unlock Dark artifacts.” Malfoy lounged back against the wall, his voice soft, his eyes sharp. “I already saw what I expected to see, my own affinity. I want to see what comes of yours.”  
  
Harry nodded and called up the image of the Hanging Tree, still the most vivid of those he had seen on the Dark paths, and the curve of solid black dirt that led to it. He flung both at the artifact, imagining it opening like a scroll down his fingers and into the air and up to the artifact. The white serpent extended his head as though he was interested in supporting the bridge on his neck.  
  
Harry “saw” the moment when his imagined path made contact with the artifact as a shower of black sparks. He felt it, too, a jerk in his belly that made him stumble as if he were bracing against the pull of a Portkey. And then his mind sped forwards, and back, and down, leaving his body behind.  
  
Still speeding, still curving, he landed in the middle of a vast, wild, bleak landscape. Black desert, cracked earth, the corpses of trees in several directions. Harry turned in a slow circle and tried to tell himself that this was not the way his soul would look to someone else; in fact, that was a stupid delusion to have leaped to.  
  
And no matter what his soul looked like, at least he had one person who would always think he was beautiful.  
  
As his breathing eased and clarified, he saw the path leading away in front of him, darker than the black earth, and stepped onto it. It sparked and spat at him, then calmed, and there were no distractions of laughter and song off to the sides, either. Harry began to walk slowly forwards, his arms spread for balance.  
  
The path ended soon enough, in front of what looked like another stump of a charred tree. Harry knelt down in front of it and smoothed his hands up and down the trunk, searching for a way in, through the cracks in the bark.  
  
The tree shuddered twice, and the roots that spiraled out of it to grip the earth abruptly rose and reared, shaking back and forth, wrapping around Harry’s arms and legs. He fought for a moment, but then saw, just before the tree sucked him in, that the path continued on into the trunk, in specks of curving black like coal dust.  
  
He closed his eyes and tried to relax, tried not to breathe, as the tree drew him in and down.  
  
For long moments, he simply lay in the stomach of the earth, and felt earth moving over him. Then he opened his eyes and nearly jumped. He was in front of the Hanging Tree. Had he somehow managed to reach the Dark paths, the ordinary ones, from here?  
  
No, he saw as he struggled up onto his knees. This was a vision, and a vision only. Because from the foot of the Hanging Tree other paths ran away, new ones springing up even as Harry watched, and footprints appeared on every one of them. He stared, trying to commit the number and the shape of the footprints to mind, but there were too many of them, and more multiplied every moment.  
  
Was the magic telling him that he would have a genius for walking the Dark paths, then? Harry couldn’t help but cock his head with the disappointment. Every Dark wizard could do that, but not everyone could do what Parkinson managed with keys or Draco with information. Harry had hoped to have a separate specialty of his own. Commanding snakes was wonderful, but inborn and not something he had learned.  
  
Then he thought he understood, and opened his mouth in a shout of joy at the same moment as the vision shattered and he dropped back into his body, all his bones ringing like struck harps.  
  
He could discover _new_ Dark paths. That was what the vision had been doing.  
  
Harry had to smile, and he felt his tongue dart out. Malfoy would be so jealous. He wanted the knowledge that it seemed would come more easily to Harry, perhaps even flowing over him like a waterfall.  
  
But he sobered up in the next instant. He might have a talent for this, but it wouldn’t be _easy._ Malfoy had needed to scold that into Harry at the beginning. After meeting the cobras that he couldn’t control with Parseltongue, though, Harry wouldn’t need another reminder.  
  
The vision continued to hang in front of him for an instant, and then exploded. Harry lifted his head and gasped in air. The white serpent looped him closer and said, _You look weary, brother. How far did you go on that path?  
  
Far enough to know that I can learn new paths, paths that no one has ever found before, _ Harry said, and turned around.  
  
Malfoy stood behind him, his face hanging over Harry’s like a small moon. Harry jumped, but straightened up when Malfoy snickered at him. “It’s not that funny,” Harry snapped. “I didn’t know that you had a talent for creeping up on people.”  
  
“You might as well just decide that I have a talent for annoying you and let it go at that,” Malfoy said, and then waited, one hand raised as if he was conducting an orchestra.  
  
“I can find new Dark paths,” Harry said. “Ones that were always there, but which no one else has ever seen. It showed me an image of the Hanging Tree and the paths sprouting away from the base.”  
  
For a moment, Malfoy quivered like a horse on the end of a tight rein. And then he bowed his head and shook it a little, sighing.  
  
“I envy you,” he said. “And I shouldn’t, because I command my talents better than you do, and I’ve walked more paths than you know exist yet, and you might die in the first exercise of that gift. You have _so_ much to learn about being a Dark wizard.”  
  
Harry held onto his temper, even managing to smile. “Thanks to you, I might survive to learn it.”  
  
Malfoy clapped him on the shoulder. “Right. Look forward to the challenges, and thank me for my most gracious help, instead of getting upset about the comments that I can’t keep from slipping out.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “Have you ever looked into self-control for your mouth as well as your magic? You might benefit.”  
  
“But I enjoy the way you look when you’re angry,” Malfoy murmured, nodding down, and Harry looked to see the bands of scales swelling and sweeping over his hands, down to his fingers, further than they usually went. His fingers hadn’t started to shorten yet, but Harry still concentrated to drive the scales back. “Beautiful,” Malfoy added.  
  
Harry nodded back to show that he appreciated the comment and said, “What do you propose to do now?”  
  
Malfoy waved his wand, and the arcs of light that supported the artifact vanished back into nothingness. The artifact began to tumble, but Malfoy caught it in a sack that he whipped out of his belt and held ready. Harry thought he heard a single hiss from the exposed purple part as it fell, but the white serpent swept his tongue out before Harry could ask him and said, _Nothing but random cursing._  
  
“We show it to Skeeter and unleash a public relations disaster for the Ministry,” said Malfoy.   
  
Harry had to admit that he found nothing wrong with either the boldness or the phrasing of that plan.  
  
*  
  
Skeeter sat bolt upright on her chair as Draco explained their raid into the Department of Mysteries as “an expedition of concerned citizens.” She all but wriggled, faster than her quill could write, when Draco said that they had found an artifact and discovered that it was tuned to Dark wizards, and therefore that they “wanted to rescue their brothers and sisters in magic from hypocrisy.” Draco opened the sack and posed in front of the room with the artifact, and Skeeter took picture after picture, hitting the side of her camera when it didn’t operate fast enough for her liking.  
  
Draco smiled serenely, aware of the way that Pansy, watching off to the side, shook her head. She thought they were moving too fast, that they should hold back and continue building a campaign of gentle hints to many wizards that Dark Arts were something interwound with their lives, spells that people used all the time, instead of something sharply different.  
  
And Draco did intend to pursue that tactic with the people it might reach. But with Unspeakables looking through Pansy’s wards and the Ministry freezing Harry’s accounts, he also intended to give them something else to think about.  
  
The interview finished with Skeeter standing up and shaking both their hands. If she felt anything different about the dry and slightly scaly skin on the palm of Harry’s, she didn’t say so. “Thank you, Mr. Malfoy,” she said huskily. “To be involved in an exposé of this sort…to have the leading role in breaking the biggest story of the century…” She took out a handkerchief to mop at her eyes. “You have no idea what this means to me.”  
  
Draco smiled into her eyes, certain they understood each other, more than content that it be so. “I think I can guess, Madam Skeeter,” he said. “Your eyes are always eloquent.”  
  
Skeeter simpered and whimpered at him, and then left. Draco remained standing upright as he swept the room with his wand, looking for listening charms and scraps of beetle carapace that Skeeter might have left behind. When he couldn’t find anything on the fourth sweep, he relaxed, and leaned back until he tipped into the chair that stood waiting for him. “What was wrong with it?” he asked Pansy.  
  
Pansy hauled a strand of hair out of her mouth and shook her head. “Oh, nothing, if you want to destroy everything that Dark wizards have worked to hide for a hundred years.”  
  
“Of course I do,” Draco said. “What we have are _pieces,_ lying around where Grindelwald and the Dark Lord tossed them. We can’t build an effective defense out of that. I’m destroying the Ministry’s fortress so that we’ll stand on even ground.”  
  
“That all depends on them reacting the way you want them to.” Pansy pointed one accusing finger at him. “I don’t think that will happen.”  
  
“Give me clear reasons,” Draco said, and smiled at her silence. He turned away and faced Harry, who sat on a chair and stroked the white serpent. Draco could make out the faint threads of gold in its scales now even when he was on the other side of the room. “What about you, Harry?”  
  
“I want to talk to my friends.”  
  
Draco hummed his disagreement. “I think it’s better to wait until they contact you. Otherwise, they might feel like you’re pressuring them into accepting you.”  
  
“But I haven’t heard anything from them for several days.” Harry curled his hands down until his fingers looked like the regular, overlapping patterns of a giant scale’s snakes. “It’s hard for me to concentrate on what Skeeter’s going to do, because I keep imagining the way they’ll react, and I’d like to know what they’re thinking right _now,_ before this bomb hits.”  
  
Pansy rolled her eyes from the corner. Draco smiled. That was a natural gesture from her, a right one, and he would rather see her look disgusted because Harry was too focused on the people who had rejected him than because Harry had changed into a snake.  
  
“If you want me to contact them, I can do that,” Draco said. “But I warn you that they might not accept a message from me under any circumstances. They’re more likely to take one from you. Are you up to sending one?”  
  
Harry remained silent for a moment, his scales gleaming and rippling back light as he turned his hands, the white serpent watching on his shoulder as if it could catch shadows of emotion in his face that Draco couldn’t. Then Harry looked up, and his jaw had clenched in a way that Draco knew didn’t signal a transformation.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
*  
  
 _The cold one is kind to let you do this, brother._  
  
Harry nodded back to the white serpent, but didn’t speak. He was kneeling in front of Malfoy’s fireplace, his hands on his knees, and his body so slick and cold with sweat that he was tempted to change simply to make it stop. Snakes couldn’t sweat.  
  
Or speak English, or look his friends in the eye, or tell them what he felt and that he missed them. Harry fought back the change that wanted to make its way up from his legs, for the fifth time that day, and took a breath so long that it seemed to make his lungs sway and bulge, then leaned back and cast the handful of Floo powder into the fire. “Ron’s Place,” he said quietly. They hadn’t changed the Floo address even though Hermione lived there too.  
  
The fire flickered for a moment, making Harry wonder if his friends had closed their Floo against him. He blinked. He hadn’t even considered _that_ particular ignominious end to this attempt to contact his friends. Perhaps he would have to wait until they sent him an owl, no matter how much he longed to know.  
  
Then the fire turned green and orange, and Hermione’s face appeared. She stared straight at Harry and hissed out of a corner of her mouth, as if she was a snake herself, “No time to talk. The Unspeakables are here. They’ve put a watch—”  
  
Harry jerked back as the fire exploded in a shower of sparks. One of them landed on his arm, but a quick swat put it out. The hearth had gone cold, but just in case the Unspeakables could try and trace him by the magic used in it, Harry used his wand to clear the last grains of Floo powder out of it.  
  
He settled back, feeling cold and sick. His friends were war heroes, good people, without the stigma of Parseltongue or the history with the public swinging back and forth between hating and loving them that Harry had. Harry had considered that they might abandon him, or that they might suffer public displeasure once people found out that they _weren’t_ abandoning him, but never that the Unspeakables would go after them simply because they were his friends.  
  
Hermione had looked all right, he thought. Distressed, but not physically abused. It left Harry without much news, but at least sure his friends were still alive. If Ron had been hurt or dead, he knew Hermione would have used her few words to tell him that instead.  
  
 _We can fight for them, brother._  
  
Harry smiled wanly down at the white snake and stood. “Of course we can.” And he went to find Malfoy, already turning over, in his mind, what this knowledge might do to their strategy.   
  
At least, he thought with macabre humor that couldn’t make him smile much more than the snake had, this _had_ shown Hermione and Ron that Dark wizards lurked both inside and out of the Ministry.


	19. Poised to Strike

  
“Yes, I should perhaps have anticipated that.” Malfoy leaned back in his chair with a pose that frustrated Harry, because it was so _casual._ “The Unspeakables cannot reach us at the moment, and Skeeter’s article hasn’t yet informed them, but they must know that there’s a high chance we’re behind the theft. So they went after your friends to force you out, knowing how protective you are of them.”  
  
Harry clenched all the muscles in his legs, which helped keep them from transforming. “And what are we going to do about it?”  
  
“Plan.”  
  
That single sharp word quenched the venom that was starting to swell in Harry’s cheeks, and he sat down on the chair, smiling slightly at Malfoy. The white serpent curled around his neck, licked his cheek, and said, _I told you that he would try to fix it, brother._  
  
“Fine,” Harry said. He clasped his hands in front of him and studied them, reminding himself again that Hermione and Ron probably weren’t in immediate _physical_ danger. Hermione would have told him if they were. She was sensible about things like that, quick in a crisis; she would have known it was most important to get that across. “But what should the plan concern? Is Parkinson going to help us?”  
  
“Pansy might not want to immediately,” Malfoy said, his eyes clouding as he looked up at the ceiling. “She lent her house to us for our first meeting with your friends. She might think that she has done that much and should be excused from more.”  
  
Harry licked around his fangs, and waited.  
  
“But Millicent’s a possibility,” Malfoy said, and smiled at Harry. “She was the one who created the distraction that allowed me to rescue you from St. Mungo’s in the first place. I know that she would be reluctant to do something directly in hospital again for a time, lest they suspect her, but the Unspeakables are a different matter. And while I don’t think she has any fondness for your friends, she doesn’t hate them, either. And Blaise might help.”  
  
 _More Slytherins,_ Harry thought, but it was true that he had chosen to surround himself with Slytherins and Dark wizards when he decided to become one. He leaned back and nodded. “Will you contact them?”  
  
“At once, if you want me to,” Malfoy said, and stood, and bowed, and walked out of the drawing room where he had brought Harry to sit.  
  
Harry closed his eyes, and thought about it. How many of his fellow Aurors would have gone right away to do something that he asked of them like that? Hell, how many of his friends would have?   
  
Ron and Hermione, before the Parseltongue and the madness that they suspected of infecting him. Ginny—once. But the subject of Ginny was a painful one, one that Harry sometimes couldn’t help playing with, like a loose tooth, but didn’t want to think of now.  
  
Mrs. Weasley. The twins, once upon a time. Neville, after that last year when they had all come back to Hogwarts and renewed their friendship. But not many other people, and Harry gave a small, bitter smile. It seemed that he might have doubled the number of people who would help him simply by going to Malfoy.  
  
 _That is the way it is,_ the white snake said into his ear, flinging a coil of cool body there, and then resting against his neck as though he would never move. _You only have to accept it. You should be more practical. You have_ me.   
  
Harry touched him, and turned his head so that his cheek rested against the scales, in turn, and waited.  
  
*  
  
“Frankly, you’re going to have to do something more for me.”  
  
Draco nodded. He really had no more debts to hold over Millicent, and helping a Gryffindor—or former Gryffindor—was different for her than helping someone who had aided her in the past. “All right. What?”  
  
That made Millicent reach up and wind some of her hair around her fingers; it was clear that she had expected a more extended negotiation. Draco hid his smile and waited, calmly, blandly patient. He loved being able to knock people off-balance; among other things, it signaled to him that he still had the ability to take risks that was necessary for a Dark wizard.  
  
And it wouldn’t do any harm to go a little further than he needed to for Harry’s sake and have Millicent owe him a favor.  
  
Finally, Millicent leaned forwards and said, “I think you owe me one of those potions that you’ve been bragging about for years, Draco. The ones that sharpen your mind and make your concentration cut like a knife. I have exams coming up soon, and there are people who don’t want me to pass them because of my family. I need to make sure that my marks are so brilliant they have no choice.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “Millicent, you are asking me to help you _cheat_? I am _shocked_.”  
  
“I know,” Millicent said, and then they spoke in unison, although Draco had tried to hurry the words up so he would be the first to say them:  
  
“Shocked that you never asked me before.”  
  
Millicent smiled. “In truth, no more than a potion to enhance my memory and senses. They would look for something other than that, and I have to undergo a test for every illegal potion they can think of before I enter the room for the exams.”  
  
“This won’t be one they can think of,” Draco said comfortably. “All right. I’ll want you to meet me at my house this afternoon.”  
  
Millicent smiled. “How horrible. Healer Trainee Otterson will just have to handle the case of that child who continually cries and pisses himself on her own, since I’ll be in bed with a headache.”  
  
Draco nodded, and then let the Floo connection die so he could call Blaise. He received no answer at home, so he called Blaise’s office, chiding himself for forgetting. He was a magical researcher—and independently wealthy, which was really more of a concern—and could set his own schedule. Blaise, on the other hand, had chosen the path of demanding, risky work instead of demanding, risky fun.  
  
The sounds of the office came through the minute Draco called out Blaise’s address: the scratch of quills, the murmur of hastened and hushed conversations, the rustle of parchment as trainee lawyers compared what they had written with what the law books and old scrolls said. Draco waited until someone had the leisure to attend him. Even though he could only hear and not see most of this world, it was still knowledge.  
  
A clerk peeped around the desk that Blaise kept in front of his Floo, squeaked and nearly toppled over with bowing, and then turned and ran in the opposite direction. Draco sat back. The next minute, Blaise strolled around the desk as though he had just happened to be walking in that direction and sat down, arching his eyebrows at Draco.  
  
“This chair is less comfortable than I remembered,” he murmured. “I shall have to have a new one put here.”  
  
Draco studied him with some admiration. He and Blaise had been lovers several times, and Blaise had an even finer dress sense since he had opened his own office, with a set of deep red robes that made him look as if he were clad in smoldering embers and flattered his dark skin. He had tousled his hair—not in the same way Harry’s was, which even Draco had to admit didn’t look _professional_ —and had done up his face with a few subtle touches of glamour charms. He could look reassuring or command attention with the merest change of expression.  
  
“Do,” Draco said. “But don’t worry about it right away, as you can sit on one in the Manor.”  
  
Blaise nodded, as if he had expected nothing more. “You’ve run into trouble with the Unspeakables, then?”  
  
Draco didn’t flinch or blink an eye, because he had expected this. “Pansy,” he said with a sigh.  
  
“Pansy,” Blaise agreed, with a small smirk and a tilt of his head to the side that made him look almost winsome. Draco, who knew him better than any of the people working in the office ever would, had to admire his acting ability. “I must say, Draco, you’re hanging around a better class of criminal these days.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
In that one moment of intense eye contact, Draco knew, Blaise had learned things about Harry and Draco’s claim on him that Draco would have had a hard time putting into words, but which Blaise could sense. He lifted his hands in a delicate defense. “Draco, Draco, you wound me with your distrust,” he said. “All right, no repayment of favors that way. But is it permitted for me to ask for something else?”  
  
“I wouldn’t trust you at all if you told me that you were going to work for free,” Draco pointed out.  
  
Blaise nodded. “True. Then what I want is your guarantee that Potter is going to use my services for his future legal troubles.”  
  
“Defamation and the like?” Draco asked. “Taking up a new line, Blaise?”  
  
“Oh, no,” Blaise said, in a liquid voice that had also fooled more than one magistrate, more than one member of the Wizengamot, into thinking that here was someone _harmless_ that they could babble all their troubles to. “I meant more in the line of services such as unfreezing Gringotts accounts.”  
  
Draco smiled. “It isn’t a line of work I would have thought of asking you to undertake,” he said. “But isn’t that trading a favor for more work?”  
  
Blaise shook his head. “Not with the amount of attention Potter will draw to my business,” he said, with a wave at the office that Draco knew full well didn’t represent a tenth of his interests. “And if he agrees to act—discreet—in public, then we can do even more. Besides, think of the legal precedents for a case like this!” By now, Blaise was sitting fully upright, and his eyes shone. “If they can freeze the accounts of a Parselmouth for _being_ a Parselmouth, then what about the Metamorphmagi, or Animagi, or any wizard who’s a bit different and has an inborn gift that could potentially be used for the Dark Arts?”  
  
“Those haven’t _traditionally_ been considered Dark gifts in the same way,” Draco had to point out, because he never skipped the chance to point out Blaise’s lack of a research background when he could.  
  
Blaise flipped a hand. “Semantics. In the meantime, Potter and I will be conducting the real business, and investigating legal precedent, and pointing out the delicious consequences of the slippery slope.”  
  
Draco laughed, and saluted Blaise. Blaise nodded back and turned around as someone called “Mr. Zabini!” from beyond him.  
  
Draco stood up and executed a little dance step as his own Floo closed. He and Harry had allies, and even if those allies didn’t like Harry—the way that he knew Pansy didn’t—then that was still more than enough firepower for the Unspeakables.  
  
They wouldn’t know what had hit them.  
  
*  
  
Harry stared at the parchments that Malfoy had spread out in front of him, and then shook his head. “I don’t understand all these notations,” he said, letting his fingers rest on the abbreviations that seemed to dominate the sheaves of paper.  
  
He didn’t miss the way Parkinson raised her eyebrows at Malfoy, and knew what she would be saying, silently. _He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know half of what he should. Why did you let him be with us, again?_  
  
Harry flushed at the thought, and held his head up high. Parkinson only looked further away. Probably the sight of the collar of scales around his throat wasn’t an inspiring one, Harry had to admit.  
  
 _Do not worry, brother,_ said the white serpent, coiled close and happy on his shoulder. _She will help us no matter what she feels for you. Because when the cold one mentions the Unspeakables, she stinks of fear._  
  
Harry wished for a moment that his senses were that sharp, and then thought of the smells that would probably come to him all the time from Malfoy’s direction and took the wish back. Besides, he could create snakes to warn him of danger through _all_ the senses if he wanted to. The white serpent was merely his closest and most constant companion. _Why do you call him the cold one? Because he doesn’t build the fires up enough?_ He and Malfoy were still sleeping in separate beds, and Harry had noticed that the white snake went under the covers last night, as if the fire wasn’t adequate.  
  
The white snake stuck out his tongue and looked at Harry in what seemed to be, honestly, nothing more than surprise. _Because he has no snakes to warm him. He must be cold._  
  
Harry would have responded, but Malfoy interrupted then. “They’re just abbreviations in case someone manages to steal the plans,” he said dismissively. “In the meantime, Blaise is going to use his contacts in the Ministry to find out what the Unspeakables are doing with your friends, if they’re just keeping a watch on their Floo or if they’ve actually moved them out of their house and someplace else.”  
  
Harry swallowed. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that Ron and Hermione might not be in Ron’s Place anymore, but he should have. He had firecalled Hermione yesterday, and that had got, briefly, through the watch the Unspeakables had put on the Floo. That meant they might have decided a more secure location was better.  
  
“Then Millicent is going to create a distraction.” Malfoy nodded across the table to Millicent Bulstrode, who had joined them that morning. Harry studied her covertly. She looked a lot different from the girl he’d known in Hogwarts, but he wondered how much of that was the clothes of a trainee Healer. She nodded to Harry now and looked at Malfoy as if his existence was unimportant. It probably was, Harry reflected. He _could_ have been a Slytherin, and he was now a Dark wizard, but he wasn’t part of that same tight circle of friends around Malfoy.  
  
 _And sometimes, you want to be._  
  
Harry was glad that no one else in the room could understand Parseltongue, and that only Malfoy was looking sidelong at his flaming face. But then, Malfoy noticed everything, and there was little Harry could do about _that_. He blinked at Malfoy in reassurance, and Malfoy decided that it was all right and said, “You ought to see Millicent’s distractions.”  
  
“Oh, yes,” Bulstrode said, and touched something lying on the table in front of her, something that looked to Harry like a chip of black diamond, or condensed dust from the Dark paths. “This one is going to be _spectacular._ ”  
  
Harry decided not to ask at this point. Then it might seem that he didn’t trust them. “All right. And you and Parkinson and I are going to go in and hit the Unspeakables once we figure out where Ron and Hermione are?”  
  
Malfoy turned his head modestly to the side, which unfortunately looked too much like the position he’d taken up in the shower the other day not to arouse Harry. “Of course,” Malfoy said, while Harry literally sat on the arousal and tried not to listen to the white serpent hissing gently in his ear. “We three worked well together when we went into the Department of Mysteries. It only makes sense to assemble the same team again.”  
  
“I want him not to change.”  
  
Harry started and looked at Parkinson. She hadn’t spoken much today, and that was one reason why, but her voice had changed, too. It was flat, and she leaned forwards with her fists on the table and her eyes on him.  
  
“I don’t want you to change into a snake again,” Parkinson said. For some reason, he voice sounded almost lilting even though it _was_ flat. “Promise me that you won’t.”  
  
“Unless I need to take to that Dark path I conquered, where being a snake is almost required, then I won’t,” Harry promised.  
  
Parkinson leaned back and looked at Malfoy. “Not good enough,” she said, less with sound than with the shape of her lips.  
  
Malfoy sighed and turned in place to look at Harry. “Pansy has a problem with the full shapeshift,” he said. “We probably won’t use Dark paths much at all when we go in after the Unspeakables, because we can’t guarantee that your friends’ house or wherever else they are has one. So can you manage to keep from turning into an anaconda?”  
  
Harry bit his tongue on the temptation to say that Parkinson should examine her own prejudices about Parselmouths, and nodded. She was still far less prejudiced than his friends were. And he had to work with her, he didn’t have to like her.  
  
 _It’s good that you don’t like her,_ said the white serpent, turning around to put his chin on top of Harry’s head. _I think the cold one might not like that._  
  
Harry _really_ wished that his face would stop flooding with color so often. Once again, Malfoy cocked his head, and once again, Harry just had to meet his eyes and shake his head. There was no reason for him to speak, and nothing he could say that would explain it to Malfoy without violently embarrassing them both.  
  
Malfoy let it go, mercifully, and said, “As long as you agree not to do it unless you _must._ I think even Pansy wouldn’t have a problem with it if you were saving our lives.”  
  
“From extreme duress, as Gryffindors would say.” Parkinson’s eyes were more slitted than the eyes of some of Harry’s snakes. “Then no, I wouldn’t have a problem.”  
  
Harry nodded. “Then I promise not to shapeshift unless it’s to save our lives.”  
  
Malfoy reached across the table and lightly touched his hand. Harry shuddered under the touch, his skin jumping. Malfoy didn’t miss that, he knew; a slow smile made Malfoy’s mouth appear broader than before, and he withdrew his fingers with a few slow scrapes up and down Harry’s tendons.  
  
“Good,” Malfoy said, turning away and looking at Bulstrode and Parkinson. “Then no one else has any problems?”  
  
Parkinson shook her head, and Bulstrode followed, scooping up the black seed in front of her. Harry decided that he would watch her “distraction” carefully and keep his snakes well away from the magic if it looked destructive. He had already lost more than he would like.  
  
“Blaise should have news for us before tomorrow,” Malfoy said, and clapped his hands. “So rest now. We need to be ready to move at any time, even if it’s the middle of the night.”  
  
Parkinson and Bulstrode nodded and departed. Harry sat at the table for a minute after they were gone, caught up in the differences between the way they planned and the way he and Ron and Hermione did. If Hermione was directing this, she would tell them every detail, and Ron and Harry would argue over it. Harry wondered if the way that Malfoy and his friends went about it conveyed more trust, or less.  
  
“Harry.”  
  
Harry started and looked up. Malfoy stood over him, looking down, mouth a hollow slash against his face. Harry smiled wanly. “The order to rest applies to everyone, right?” he asked. “I know that I didn’t sleep as well last night as I should have, with the way I was worrying about my friends.”  
  
 _I offered to smother your mouth and nose until you passed out,_ the white serpent said, swaying back and forth sadly. _I would not have let you die. It is not my fault that you didn’t choose to avail yourself of my good offices.  
  
_ Harry would have replied, but Malfoy touched the back of his hand again and stopped him. “Sometimes,” Malfoy whispered, bending over him so that his hair sheltered both their faces, “to rest, you need to make sure that you exhaust yourself first.”  
  
“More work in the lab?” Harry rose, and found that he was rising into Malfoy’s arms. They circled him as if they would have hold of him in any shape, let his shoulders sink or his trunk thicken, and Harry shuddered and swayed towards him, captured despite himself by that promise of utmost faithfulness.  
  
“No,” Malfoy said. “I thought something else might serve.”  
  
The white serpent unwound himself and slithered down Harry’s arm. _Human mating is still uninteresting,_ he announced, near the door; Harry hadn’t known he could move that fast. _Wake me when you come to bed, so that I can adjust my position. And send house-elves to build up the fire._  
  
Harry opened his mouth to say, either to the serpent or Malfoy, that he hadn’t said yes yet, that he objected to the automatic assumption that he would spend the night with Malfoy—  
  
And then realized that his body had spoken for him, with the way he swayed into Malfoy and the hand he had already raised to touch his cheek. Besides, the white snake had doubtless picked up the truth from his smell.  
  
“Yes?” Malfoy asked into his ear, and the sound traveled deep and stirred up echoes that rang through the bones in Harry’s skull.  
  
“Yes,” Harry said, and knew it didn’t matter whether he spoke in Parseltongue or English. Malfoy would understand either way.  
  
 _It’s wonderful to have someone who does._  
  
As they kissed, the world tilted around Harry, and he seemed to fall down a chute. He had no idea what waited at the bottom, and he had to admit that he didn’t fear finding out. Perhaps he should have. Perhaps he should remember, still, that Malfoy was dangerous and his enemy up until recently.   
  
But he didn’t want to remember. And this was his will right now, his choice, his freedom.  
  
He reached out and gathered Malfoy into his arms the way Malfoy had already gathered him.


	20. Like a Dancing Serpent

  
Draco took Harry to his bedroom.  
  
He could see Harry pausing on the threshold to look around at the mirrors on the walls, the thick blankets on the bed, and the steps that led up to a bathtub positioned in one corner of the room, surrounded by charms to keep the carpet from getting damp. “You don’t have a separate bathroom?” Harry asked, turning to him. The venom sacs in his cheeks had swelled out again.  
  
Draco had no idea why Harry should find it threatening that he didn’t, but he had accepted that Harry’s instincts could be triggered by things that wouldn’t alarm Draco himself. “No, I don’t,” he said, peacefully, pulling off his shirt with a casual motion that drew Harry’s eyes to his chest. “Does that bother you?”  
  
Harry flushed, for what could be any of several reasons, as Draco approached him. “It just makes me feel a little guilty about taking a room that _does_ have one,” he murmured, but closed his eyes and leaned back as Draco kissed his cheek.  
  
Draco laughed gently into Harry’s mouth, and shook his head so that his hair brushed Harry’s cheek. “Don’t you think I know the specifics of all the rooms in the house? And that I could have given myself a separate bathroom if I wanted one?” He curled his fingers in and stroked down Harry’s face, delighting in the way that the scales around his brow and the venom in his cheeks and the slight bumps of the fangs against the sides of his mouth changed things. “I wanted you to have it because I think you’ve had little enough luxury in your life.”  
  
Harry’s eyes were slitted as they turned on him, and it looked as though the eyelids might be growing transparent, fading. “What do you know about that?”  
  
“Only what I see about you, what you choose to tell me,” Draco whispered, and swayed into him, kissing him, trying to make him think about taking his clothes off instead of something else that, frankly, didn’t need to occupy their time as much.  
  
“I didn’t choose to tell you _anything_ ,” Harry said, and strained his neck up, like a rearing cobra. That let Draco get in under his chin and begin taking his shirt off, though, and from the way Harry jumped, he hadn’t been expecting that at all. He eyed Draco warily for a moment, then grunted. “I mean, I didn’t complain to you about my friends or the treatment I received at Hogwarts.”  
  
 _Or the treatment that you received as a child?_ Draco thought, but only graced his fingers down Harry’s chin and neck instead of saying it. “Let’s get you out of this,” he whispered. “And you might think about what your body tells me. Such as that you’re aroused right now.” He had unbuttoned enough of Harry’s shirt to slide his hands under it and touch those ribs, and the sleek, slender flesh that covered them.  
  
Harry closed his eyes and reached up to slide his hands around Draco’s wrists in turn. Draco waited, faintly smiling, and not looking away even though he could see Harry shivering and knew Harry might have preferred it. This was the kind of intimacy that Draco had wanted with him, even more than he had wanted the knowledge of Parseltongue studying Harry might give him.  
  
 _Really? I want it that much?_  
  
Yes, he did, Draco thought, as Harry finally yielded from his stupid stiff posture and began kissing him back, and that was something new, to know that he wanted something more than knowledge, his obsession and his specialty as a Dark wizard. He had Harry to thank for teaching him.  
  
It carried him further than he had come before, into something perilously close to love, and he laughed into Harry and curved further over him, shoving him towards the bed with sheer force of desire.  
  
*  
  
Harry had no snakes with him now, and he didn’t know if that meant he trusted Malfoy or if he felt he didn’t need them here.  
  
But he had felt he needed them everywhere he went in the Manor so far, not just dangerous places like Malfoy’s lab or the Department of Mysteries. Why wouldn’t he need them in the inner sanctum of a man who had so recently been his enemy, and still acted as though it was Harry’s duty to give him more information about himself?  
  
 _Because I feel safe with him,_ Harry finally admitted, as his own shirt bared his chest and he felt Malfoy bend to flicker a tongue that wasn’t forked up and down the edges of his muscles. _Because I’m not in danger here._  
  
So finally he could give way to the flooding heat within him, and dismiss the guilt and the fear over the idea that Malfoy had sacrificed his own comfort to Harry’s. Harry had to smile now as he thought about it. Was Malfoy _really_ the kind of person who would give everything up to Harry?  
  
“That’s better,” Malfoy said, and stepped back, and slid out of his trousers and pants as smoothly as a snake.   
  
Harry sat up and watched him. Malfoy was less slender than Harry had thought he was the last time they did this, but then, he’d been behind Malfoy in the shower and not able to see him that well. Now Harry could make out that the leanness wasn’t dangerous. It was the voluntary leanness of someone who burned up all his energy the minute he got it. Malfoy stalked towards him and looked down at him, and increased the resemblance to a predator.  
  
 _I’m not the only one. I don’t have to be the only one. I don’t have to take up the burden of my own safety forever._  
  
The idea rolled over him, and made Harry’s muscles shimmer and melt. He could have taken off his own trousers easily enough, but he spread his legs instead and guided Malfoy’s hand to the buttons.  
  
“Ah, yes,” Malfoy said, and half-closed his eyes as he worked his hand in and down. Harry gasped as slippery fingers touched his groin. Malfoy opened his eyes fully again and smiled at him. “You mean that you never learned non-verbal charms for lube?”  
  
Harry swallowed and shook his head. He thought his own throat was thicker than usual, probably with the venom in the sacs under his cheeks, but if Malfoy didn’t find that horrible, then Harry would try not to, either. “I thought—I didn’t see you wave your wand,” he said, although given how distracted he was, that didn’t mean much. “And I didn’t know I was gay until now.”  
  
“Not gay, if you don’t want to call yourself that,” Malfoy murmured, and bent to suck at Harry’s neck, so skillfully that Harry placed a hand on the back of his head to keep him there. Malfoy pulled away with a little shiver and laugh. “What matters is that you want to be here, with me. That’s what I find most arousing of all.”  
  
“Yes,” Harry whispered, and turned his head to the side to feel Malfoy’s straight tongue against his own forked one.  
  
*  
  
This time, it took fewer minutes for Harry’s inhibitions to melt. And he looked as if he was enjoying himself, and spending less time brooding on whether this was a Dark wizard thing to do or not.  
  
Draco intended to make sure that he kept enjoying it like that.  
  
He knelt at Harry’s feet and coaxed his legs to spread, then reached out and rested his slick fingers on Harry’s hole. Harry panted and paused for a moment. The next moment, his hands had moved beneath his knees and he was hauling his legs up, holding them poised above his head, spreading them and grunting with effort as he tried to keep himself in the position where Draco had the best access.  
  
“Yes, I like that,” Draco whispered, and gave Harry a dazzling smile as a reward—from the way he blinked, Harry would have liked to watch it forever—and reached out to run his fingers over the faint patterned scales around Harry’s arse.  
  
Harry hissed. Draco let the sound caress his skin the way his fingers caressed Harry’s, waited until it ceased, and slid two fingers inside, hard and fast.  
  
Harry cried out this time, a falling hiss with a bit of a human sound on the end. Draco stroked and petted him until he heard his panting slow. “Is this all right?” he asked, leaning back to look up into Harry’s face, and trying not to let his new learning—how hot Harry was all around him, how overwhelming—drown him.  
  
Harry stared at him and narrowed his eyes, which was impressive because of the way that his pupils had already narrowed. “It’s the kind of hurt I can take,” he said.  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. “I’m bored of your guilt and the way that you put up with displeasure and think that it’s good for your soul,” he said, digging his fingers in and crooking them to the side. “Because there’s nothing that _needs_ to be that way, really. I want you to feel good, and I wouldn’t have touched you like that if I thought it wouldn’t.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth, then shut it. “That feels good,” he said, and squirmed down the bed with his heels digging in.  
  
“I thought it would,” Draco murmured, touching his tongue to the shimmer of dusty golden-brown that grew on Harry’s ankles, and set about working him open in earnest.  
  
Harry still grunted and sighed as though this was new, and once reached down as if he would grab Draco’s hand. Draco smiled up at him fearlessly, moving his wrist, knowing that Harry had only to summon serpents to stop Draco if he really didn’t like this. That was the wonderful thing about being with someone so powerful, the thing that Draco knew he wouldn’t trade in for a more human lover: the way that Harry could force him and hold him down and make him stop.  
  
But he didn’t want to, not if Draco was actually succeeding at making him feel good.  
  
By the time that Draco rose to his feet and canted his hips in, he was tight with exhilaration and Harry was loose with pleasure. He blinked at Draco, and looked once down, and then looked quickly back up.   
  
“It looks big,” Draco said. “But I promise that I can use it as well as I use my fingers.” He moved forwards as he spoke, and now he was right next to the warmth and the slickness, rubbing slowly back and forth. “You don’t need to worry about that. I can make you feel the way that you’ve never felt before.”  
  
*  
  
Harry thought about retorting that Parseltongue also did that, and it hadn’t been a universally positive experience so far.  
  
But he found that he didn’t want to. He reached out, and Malfoy leaned in so Harry could touch him. He shut his eyes, and he thrust suggestively towards Harry’s arse as if that meant that Harry would get on faster with things, but he didn’t try to pull away. He didn’t act as though having Harry’s fingers there was an act of violation.  
  
So soon after seeing Parkinson’s disgust, Harry discovered that that mattered more to him than it had so far.  
  
He slid his hand up and down. Malfoy wasn’t bigger than he was, or at least Harry didn’t think so; he had never been one of those men who obsessively compared sizes, because he’d known from the time he was a teenager that he was never going to have a _normal_ relationship with anyone else. It would always be determined on other things, and whether people found the scar on his forehead attractive or not, they couldn’t ignore it.  
  
Malfoy seemed to, though. Or at least his eyes were all for Harry’s fangs and fingers and face, instead of his forehead.  
  
Harry thought about this slick, warm thing going into him, and his legs twitched in response. In want. Maybe he was doing this in part because they were going on an expedition that could kill them soon, or maybe it was a fuck-you to the people who had rejected him because of his Parseltongue.  
  
What mattered was what he felt, though.  
  
“Yeah,” he breathed, leaning back, and pushed himself down the bed towards Malfoy, letting his hands collapse above his head. “ _Yeah._ ”  
  
Malfoy’s face was open and shining. He bent to kiss Harry, and proved his claim about how well he could wield his cock by sliding into Harry as he moved. Harry opened his mouth and gaped, and kept on gaping, as he was hurt and polished and as Malfoy gasped and grunted above him, as overwhelmed, as present, as there.  
  
*  
  
Draco couldn’t believe how much he wanted this.  
  
Of course, he had wanted all sorts of things, and he had wanted Harry in some way ever since he saw him in hospital, but this desperate craving was new to him. He wanted to spend days watching the way that Harry’s throat flexed and moved. He thought that his chest was beautiful, even though it was probably the place on his body that had the fewest scales.  
  
He wanted to be inside him forever.  
  
He shoved, and Harry was taking pleasure from it, Draco knew he was, from the violent flush that made its way down his chest as much as the way that grunts issued from his mouth. He kept tilting his head back, and his hair dripped in his face and straggled across his eyes, and he put his hand to his mouth and bit it in a way that made Draco have to bite _him_ , to trace his tongue across the same scales and faint jagged edges to his nails that Harry had touched.  
  
Harry sometimes looked at him, sometimes looked at the ceiling, but far more often drifted somewhere in his head that had no name, and gave him a bright, permanent smile. Draco touched his cheek, and pushed down, feeling the sac, while his hips moved without him, pleasure dancing and blending in body and mind.  
  
“I could be content to stay with you for the rest of my life,” he whispered.  
  
Harry turned his head to the side, pressing his cheek into the pillow. Draco couldn’t be sure whether he had heard or not.  
  
But when he felt the vicious pleasure rising in him, it seemed to matter less. He bent down over Harry and locked his knees on the bed beside Harry’s, his eyes shut as he hammered, as he thrust, as his hands wandered over Harry’s sides and he tried to touch as much as he could, to hold as much as he could.  
  
And Harry yielded, a squall sweeping over him and out his mouth, his fingers suddenly almost gone as he writhed on the bed and his eyes shut and scales spread over his face, dappling his cheeks, dappling his lips, shutting his mouth. Draco shuddered and came, unable to take his eyes off Harry.  
  
Harry shifted to the side as though he resented the cessation of movement, and then he stilled. His hand flew up to his lips.  
  
Draco’s hand was there, faster, gripping his wrist and holding him back when Draco thought he might have begun to tear at the scales. He bent down on Harry’s right side instead and whispered into his ear, disregarding the way that Harry thrashed beneath him. “You’re still beautiful. Anyone who looks at you would know that. I know that. I _love_ the way you look.”  
  
Harry stilled, and came. Draco watched him for every reaction, and listened to the writhing until it died into silence.  
  
Then he lay down beside Harry and took him into his arms. He would have talked if Harry had wanted to, but from the sound of things, Harry wanted to lie there with his arm over his face and forget what he had looked like when he came. Draco could already see human skin creeping back.  
  
He kissed Harry’s ear and shut his eyes. They would need their sleep before their raid to rescue Weasley and Granger. He only hoped that Harry would sleep as well as he would.  
  
*  
  
Harry woke and fumbled at his mouth for a moment. But no, the shape of his face was right, and he could feel smooth human lips there, not the band of scales that he had felt changing him, shoving his mouth further forwards so the fangs would stick out in different places and dulling and retracting his other teeth.  
  
Thickening his throat. Making him the kind of snake that could swallow someone or something else whole, without needing to pause to chew. Losing the mouth that could touch, that could taste, that could kiss.  
  
No wonder Parkinson had been disgusted with him.  
  
“I can tell the way you’re thinking when you stiffen up like that, and I wish you’d stop,” came Malfoy’s voice from the side. He rolled over and draped his hand over Harry’s chest, watching him with sleepy eyes. “Does it matter what you looked like in a moment of passion? You might not like the way that Pansy orgasms, either.”  
  
Harry shuddered. “Don’t make me think about that.”  
  
“My point is proven,” Malfoy drawled, and rolled on top of him, lowering his mouth. Harry kissed him back desperately, and tasted his tongue with all the delicate sensation that his own forked one could give him.  
  
He could control the changes, he reminded himself. Most of the time, it simply wasn’t worthwhile to control things like the sharpening of his fangs, because they did him no harm and he might need them for protection any minute. But he was ultimately in charge, not lost and helpless in a cloud of madness like the one that had almost consumed him in hospital. _He_ was the one who made the decisions.  
  
“That’s better,” Malfoy said—Draco said—and pulled back to smile at him with shining eyes.  
  
Because he was Draco, not Malfoy, and Harry tangled his fingers in the blond hair above him and shut his eyes, bowing his head. He could finally give people their proper names when they had sacrificed for him and rescued him, perhaps. He could do a great number of things for Draco’s sake that Draco had done for his.  
  
Draco understood without asking, and kissed Harry’s fingers, and then moved towards the Floo as it flared, where he would answer the firecall from his friend. Harry sat up and leaned forwards, resting his cheek on his knee, because he needed a moment to breathe, and feel the combination of skin and scales that was there.  
  
*  
  
“Ready.” Millicent nodded in response to Draco’s question, rolling her seed from hand to hand and smiling in a way that boded no good for the Unspeakables.  
  
Draco smiled back and stepped away, making sure that his body was between Harry and Pansy. Pansy had her reasons to feel the way she did, but he doubted that Harry wanted to hear them just at the moment, or needed to. Draco could spend a few minutes negotiating between them, giving them time to remember that they were allies.  
  
“Ready?” Draco asked Pansy, as he had Millicent, and Pansy snapped out of staring in Harry’s direction and nodded. Her keys gleamed on her robes and around her neck, and her hands rested gently but implacably in her sleeves. Draco was glad that there would be Unspeakables around this time to learn how deadly she was. Seeing the aftermath of her openings in the Department of Mysteries was not the same thing.  
  
“Good,” Draco said, and turned to Harry. “Then that only leaves us.”  
  
Harry snapped his hands out in front of him in response. The white serpent was back on his shoulder, and Draco could see teasing swirls of other colors around his legs like a cloak of soot. Now and then he made out a blunt head or a tapered one or a fang near Harry’s wrists.  
  
Unlike last time, however, Harry didn’t go clad in snakes from head to toe. He was wearing scales instead, and a black threaded with silver instead of the golden-brown that grew all over him normally. Draco asked with a look, because the last time he had done more than glance at Harry, shortly after Blaise had told them where Granger and Weasley were, he hadn’t been this way.  
  
Harry gave him a short smile. “Growing scales on top of my skin changes their color, I find,” he murmured. “And hardens them.”  
  
Pansy twitched. Draco ignored her. “As long as you can move,” he said.  
  
Harry took a deep breath that sucked in his stomach and waved his hands about, showing that his elbow joints could bend. Draco nodded, secure in his trust in Harry, and secure in the feeling he could see shining in Harry’s eyes. Harry was beginning to trust _him_ to do more than show him new Dark Arts and make love to him.  
  
Draco paused and thought about that sentence in his head. Those did sound like rather large things to trust someone with, actually.  
  
But he and Harry were the only ones who knew how much deeper their intimacy could run, and Draco didn’t feel like sharing it with the others any more than he felt like explaining Pansy’s jumpiness around shapeshifters to Harry right now. Instead, he turned and clapped his hands. “Blaise told me that they’re in the Department of Mysteries.”  
  
Pansy stared. “But why would they bother, when they know how easily we opened a way there last time?” she asked, her hand coming to rest on the key nearest her pulse. “It’s arrogant to think they can close off the Dark paths.”  
  
Harry snorted. “That’s the Unspeakables, though,” he said. “They always thought they could take over investigations from me when I worked in the Aurors, just because they always thought they knew more about the Dark Arts and any artifacts we’d found that they wanted. They invoke knowledge that they never actually share the origin of. They _can’t_ conceive that someone else might know spells they don’t.”  
  
Draco nodded. “And they can actually structure the Department as a series of rather brilliant traps. It’s their home ground. Just because we wouldn’t do it that way doesn’t make it impossible for them to use it.”  
  
Pansy sighed. “All right. As long as you’re sure that the information Blaise gathered can be trusted.”  
  
Draco raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think you could find someone in the Ministry who doesn’t owe a favor to Blaise or know someone who owes a favor to Blaise. That’s the point. He found the most trusted information he could, because he knows Unspeakables, and there are some things they value even more than secrecy.” He glanced once more at Millicent, at Pansy, and then at Harry.  
  
It was Harry who would have made him determined to go forwards with this if he wasn’t already. Harry’s eyes were that fervent green that Draco loved so much, and his slit pupils glowed from the back, and his hands moved in graceful arcs as he reached up to stroke the white serpent’s head.  
  
He was both human and snake, the perfect blend of both, and Draco knew so many Slytherins who had aspired to that that he was a little surprised Pansy’s disgust could persist.  
  
“Forward, then,” he said, and tore open the air before the Dark path.


	21. Darkness Like a Hollow Belly

  
Harry halted the minute they stepped onto the Dark paths and turned his head back and forth. He could hear the others ahead of him, since he had been the last one through the portal, and there was the shimmering trail of light in front of them that was safe to walk, Draco guiding them along at the tip of it.  
  
But still, something was different. Something was wrong enough to bring the white serpent on his shoulder hissing into alertness. He sniffed the air with his tongue darting back and forth so fast that Harry wondered if he was actually smelling anything or only trying to intimidate potential enemies that might be watching them.  
  
Then he said, _Something is wrong, brother._  
  
Harry turned his head, but could still see nothing, only the darkness stretching away on all sides, and the light ahead of them, and Bulstrode’s and Parkinson’s backs as they crowded along after Draco. _Can you tell what?_  
  
Ahead of him, Parkinson stiffened as though just hearing him speak Parseltongue was a problem for her, but didn’t turn her head.  
  
 _No._ The snake sniffed and sniffed again, then rested his head against Harry’s ear as if to whisper. _Only that something has changed from the last time we passed this way. As though someone had left a rotting corpse in a field of flowers._  
  
Harry had stopped being surprised about what the snake knew; he could draw on Harry’s emotions and memories for the metaphors he came up with, and almost certainly was. He broke into a trot, ducking between Parkinson and Bulstrode with barely a murmur of apology, and came up beside Draco. “The white serpent thinks something is wrong,” he said quietly.  
  
“In what way?” Draco didn’t turn and didn’t stop walking. Harry bristled for a moment, then remembered the things that were probably watching them from the shadows and made himself relax.  
  
“He doesn’t really know.” Looking at the side of Draco’s face made it easier for Harry to concentrate on speaking English instead of Parseltongue, and not just because Draco was human. “A change in the scent marks it, though.”  
  
Draco nodded, and at that moment, the patch of light in which they stood and which flowed ahead of them went out. Draco stopped immediately, arms spread for balance and to prevent anyone getting past, and Harry took up the same posture, grunting only a little when Bulstrode and then Parkinson slammed into his back.  
  
“What is going _on_?” Bulstrode hissed, and poked Harry. He thought Parkinson would have done the same thing, except she probably didn’t want to touch him.  
  
“A trap,” Draco said, his voice a solemn echo from what sounded like walls closing in. “The Unspeakables must have been able to pinpoint which of the Dark paths I took into the Department. I didn’t really think they could do that.”  
  
“I _told_ you that attacking this way was a stupid idea,” Parkinson began.  
  
Draco cut her off with nothing more than a cough, but Parkinson must be more attuned to his body language than Harry was. She shut up. “You should have objected harder, then,” Draco said. “We’re here now, and we need to figure out what they did and fight it, not bicker among ourselves.”  
  
Thick silence, and then Bulstrode said, “He’s right, Pansy. Listen. I’ll try a spell that’s supposed to amplify our hearing in case a patient cries out.” She murmured something Harry didn’t know.  
  
Harry heard a pulsing heartbeat in the next second, and then two others, and then a fourth. He winced a little, hoping that Bulstrode wouldn’t need to maintain the spell for long. At this rate, he would hear the thoughts crackling through Parkinson’s brain and get in an argument with her that, as Draco had told her, they couldn’t afford.  
  
The white serpent swing his head back and forth—Harry could feel him moving although not see him—and then said, _The left. It’s coming from the left._  
  
 _Of the path?_ Harry asked, since he couldn’t tell a difference in the sound one way or the other.  
  
 _Yes._  
  
Harry repeated that aloud to the others, and when Parkinson asked how the snake could know, since snakes didn’t have ears, Harry felt able to only shrug and say, “He used mine. He uses my memories to communicate and my magic to exist. I trust him if he says that something is off in that particular direction.”  
  
“He may not know for certain,” Draco said, his voice echoing until Harry winced, “but it’s the best lead we have.” Harry heard him shuffling until he faced in the right direction, and then he did something quick and powerful with his magic, something Harry felt as a breeze along his skin, a taste of metal in his mouth, a flickering odor in his nose.  
  
A pinpoint of light appeared ahead of him. No, that wasn’t right, Harry thought, squinting. A pinpoint of darker darkness, one that turned the blackness around them into radiant shadows because they couldn’t compete with it. Floating, it darted from side to side, and revealed the country that lay beyond the path.  
  
It was nothing Harry could cope with or remember in its entirety later. There was a sweep of dark downs, he thought, black grass tumbling down to a black glass river, and there was jet and obsidian panting off to the side, and there was the pair of enormous eyes that focused on him and memories of a thousand years passing in a second—  
  
But it let them see the far more ordinary shape of a ward stretching off to the side, and the way that it coiled on the path in front of Draco’s feet. One more step, and he might have fallen into it. The vanishing of the light had probably been more a warning than anything else, Harry thought. He stroked the white serpent’s neck and hissed reassurance and praise, and the snake swayed gently back and forth.  
  
 _Of course I am wonderful. I am a snake._  
  
Draco nodded. “They located the path, and they knew we had to pass along it.” He turned to Harry. “Of course, they didn’t know that we had already found other paths that lead to and from the Department of Mysteries. Take us to the one that you conquered in snake form.”  
  
Harry stared for a moment at Draco, waiting for him to say that he was joking. But Draco’s gaze was steady, and he reached out a moment later and put his hand on Harry’s arm, rubbing back and forth.  
  
So it was up to Harry to open his mouth, and speak.  
  
“I don’t know how to get there from here,” he said. “I know that you can rip open the air between the paths, but I don’t know how to do that.”  
  
Draco gestured, and the little ball of darkness that had made it possible for them to see by way of enhanced shadow disappeared. Then he moved towards Harry. Harry turned to face him, wondering if he wanted to avoid having Bulstrode and Parkinson see what he was going to do.  
  
Hands came to rest on either side of Harry’s face. Draco leaned forwards until Harry could feel his breath directly on his collarbone, and shook Harry’s head gently back and forth.  
  
“The first time I did it, I didn’t know, either,” Draco whispered. “The point is not what you know, but what you can do.”  
  
Harry shoved irritably at him. “Don’t give me platitudes,” he hissed, knowing all the while that two pairs of eager ears were listening. “You have to realize that I don’t _have_ the experience you do. Yes, that thing in your lab showed me that I could have the talent to find new paths, but I don’t know how to exercise it.”  
  
“This is in your blood,” Draco said. “Like the Parseltongue. Or at least the potential is there. Being a Dark wizard isn’t so much about knowledge, or so much about talent, or so much about intelligence. It’s about _will_.”  
  
“So I should just take the step over the cliff and the air will magically rearrange itself so that I can fly?” Harry snapped.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Harry shut his eyes and spent a moment reminding himself what Draco was: a Dark wizard who was utterly convinced that the risks he took were justified, or could be justified, and who could absorb the losses he took from those risks without blinking. Harry knew he wasn’t that kind of person. He worried for his snakes, he worried for his friends, and now he worried for Draco.  
  
 _What about yourself?_ asked the white snake in hissing silence, sliding around Harry’s throat and coiling his head thoughtfully until Harry felt the scales on the snake’s chin against his ear. _Do you not consider that the largest risk would be to you?  
  
Yes, of course, _ Harry said, reaching up and touching his back. _But if I died, what would happen to you? What would happen to Draco and his friends?  
  
Trust him. He thinks you can do this. Do it._  
  
The advice was the kind that Harry had thought the white serpent would give, and he wanted to sigh at the unfairness of it. Unfairness, because in the end he knew there was nothing else to do and he was going to do it.  
  
He opened his eyes and stepped forwards, clenching his hands around Draco’s arms. Draco caught his gaze—Harry felt that even though he couldn’t see it in the darkness—and clutched back.  
  
“I’ll try,” Harry said quietly. “If I don’t come back in five minutes, though, I want you to retreat.” He hesitated, then said, “Promise me that you’ll try to rescue Ron and Hermione if I die?”  
  
“Of course,” Draco said, the sound of his voice telling Harry what a wide grin his mouth had split into. “It’s not just about rescuing them because they’re your friends, you know. The Unspeakables have made this personal with their threats and their attempts to keep us out. We’ll deprive them of something they want for the sheer joy of doing it.” He paused, then added, “But you won’t die.”  
  
Harry squeezed Draco’s hands, struggled with saying something more, and in the end released his wrists and backed away. He couldn’t say that he loved him, not yet, and Draco already knew Harry wanted him and depended on him. That would have to be enough.  
  
 _Humans,_ said the white snake, with a sigh that probably began at the tip of his tail.  
  
“Thank you,” Harry said, snapped, to Draco, and then turned around and closed his eyes, reaching towards the path and the memory of what had happened to him there. He felt again the scales flowing across his body, saw the swaying heads of the Runespoor-basilisk, and felt the crushing coils he had employed to get his way.  
  
None of that was the same as actually seeing the path stretching across the darkness, of course, or knowing the destination, and the longer he stood there with his face prickling with the sweat of effort and the darkness sitting unresponsive in front of him, the more Harry wondered if he would just die of embarrassment instead.  
  
 _You’re a Parselmouth,_ the white serpent whispered. _You can make snakes to guard and befriend you and fly you down stairs. What else can you do?_  
  
Harry extended one hand in front of him, fighting to hold it steady, because abruptly all the magic and power in his body were rushing along that limb. He snapped his fingers out, and felt the snake grow and drip from them, made of magic like flowing water.  
  
The soft light that emerged with the snake’s scales made Parkinson gasp. Harry opened his eyes and saw the gold-green serpent in front of him, scales as dark as jade, the threads of gold glowing on its sides. It looked back at Harry and extended an obedient tongue.  
  
 _Lead me to the path_ , Harry hissed at it, and wondered if it would know what he was talking about merely from hearing the words. But it should, when the white serpent understood him. Why not this one?  
  
He shoved a little more magic into it, aiming for comprehension and obedience, just in case.  
  
The snake paused as though listening to words Harry hadn’t spoken, and then turned and began to draw a complicated loop with its body in the air. Parkinson was saying something, but Harry didn’t listen, not when he could watch the snake create a pattern as lovely as this. His eyes trailed the swirls of light, the afterimages, not the living animal.  
  
And those patterns were a map. Harry reached out, and his free hand lingered over them and opened them. There were long skirts of darkness falling away from them, and the skirts became steps as Harry watched. The light carved and opened the darkness, and Harry moved forwards.  
  
The snake still sketched in front of him, and this time Harry could see the three shadows that would become the three heads of the Runespoor-basilisk. He called out a greeting, and the snake turned towards him with a hiss that sounded resigned. _I knew you would come back._  
  
Harry smiled, and leaped through time and space and darkness to get to the path he had conquered, a new pulse beating in the back of his throat. This was where Draco’s love of risk came from.  
  
A place that Harry could join him in, if he wanted to.  
  
*  
  
Draco stood there even when Harry and his snake made of light disappeared and Millicent and Pansy were snapping questions at him, because he wasn’t afraid and because he wanted to savor that last sight of Harry.  
  
He’d stepped, he’d leaped, and then he’d flown, green-gold lights orbiting him and the snake still stretching out as steadily from his hand as the northern star, pointing the way. Draco rubbed the back of his head and smiled.  
  
“ _Draco_. Are you paying attention?”  
  
Draco turned back towards Pansy. “I am,” he said. “And you know what you promised. That you would try to get along with Harry if he had to shapeshift to save our lives. Well, he had to the last time he went on this path. That means that I’m not going to listen to your fears now.”  
  
Harry had taken the light with him, and Draco wanted to conserve his strength in case he needed it, so he didn’t conjure another dark ball. That didn’t matter, though, not when he could hear Pansy’s jaw clamping shut.   
  
Millicent said, a moment later, calm and neutral, “You do expect him to overcome this snake and come back, then?”  
  
Draco nodded in her direction, realized the inadequacy of that before Millicent could remind him, and said, “Yes, I do. He conquered the path once before, and his gift is the finding and identification of new Dark paths. There’s no reason that it should fail him now, one of the first times he’s used it.”  
  
Millicent sighed. “But the first time one does something is fraught with risks of its own, Draco. Do you remember that?”  
  
Draco smiled wryly. “I keep myself in touch with new risks and try to learn new things for a reason, Millicent. Yes, I remember being a novice. And I assure you that there is no reason for me to distrust Harry or think he’ll weaken.” He turned to face the direction Harry had disappeared again. Shimmering afterimages and floating balls of light still cut his eyes there, so deep was the surrounding darkness; he couldn’t forget the direction even if he tried.  
  
Pansy said something else about how much she hated waiting for rescue. Draco didn’t turn a hair.  
  
He had come for Harry in St. Mungo’s and he had taught him the basics of Dark magic. And then they had saved each other in the Department of Mysteries. He was convinced that this was just a case of Harry repaying the favor.  
  
*  
  
 _You don’t know where you’re going._  
  
 _I know where the path leads,_ Harry said, and set his feet on the back of the Runespoor-basilisk. He was convinced that he could make it without changing this time, but that would still mean riding the creature, since he didn’t know the exact nature of the path through walking it.  
  
The snake hissed, and the three heads swayed back and forth like stalks of grain. _You don’t know where you’re going in the physical sense. And you want to bring someone else with you, someone who is not part of you in the way that snakes are. That is not permitted._  
  
Harry smiled. _Do you wish to debate with me on power, then? Since I don’t play by the rules._ He stepped back and concentrated as hard as he could, while his arms grew thinner, some of the flesh melting into scales and muscle.  
  
Two more snakes grew there, swaying from his forearms, the spot where he would have taken the Dark Mark if he was ever a Death Eater, and reached towards the Runespoor. The three necks tucked down, and the central one sketched a hasty pattern of submission, turning its head upside-down and towards the ground. _Yes, yes, I know, I understand! You can come with me._  
  
Harry pulled back with a smile. He had infused the fangs of those particular vipers with a venom that would kill even a creature as large as the Runespoor-basilisk, and it had smelled that, so sharp was its tongue.  
  
When he concentrated, the snakes disappeared, but he stepped onto the back with a direct stare to remind the Runespoor-basilisk that they could come back. He received a sullen hiss for it, but the creature didn’t move, either.  
  
Now he only had to bring his friends here.  
  
 _Allies? Perhaps best to call them that,_ said the white serpent, who had wrapped around Harry’s neck and forehead and was now draping casual coils onto his arms. He was longer than Harry remembered, but he didn’t have the time to worry about that right now.  
  
 _Perhaps it’s best,_ Harry agreed, and then reached out and envisioned a long snake that rolled away from his feet like a carpet, flat scales and limp tongue and skinned head, and across all the non-miles of darkness and the paths that he hadn’t walked and the ones that no one had mastered, and into the tiny slice of the path where Draco and the rest stood.  
  
 _Come!_ he called in Parseltongue, and repeated it in English, though with hissing cadences that he thought would probably frighten Parkinson. “Come! We don’t have much time.” The Unspeakables would realize that their trap hadn’t worked soon and try to capture them on Draco’s path some other way, Harry thought.  
  
*  
  
Draco tossed one glance over his shoulder as the air in front of them began to glow and rip, and the purple light revealed the way that Pansy’s face had gone pale. He touched her arm. “These are not werewolves,” he whispered. “And if Harry can speak English, at least part of him must still be human.”  
  
Pansy snorted weakly. “How reassuring,” she said, but moved through the gap with him. Millicent had already gone ahead, and Draco wondered idly what Harry’s reaction would be when he saw her. Hurt that Draco hadn’t come first?  
  
But when he saw the carpet they walked on, Draco decided that he didn’t care about that. He had to keep up light, casual chatter with Pansy about how many artifacts they would steal from the Department of Mysteries and what they would sell them for, and guide her when she nearly stumbled from keeping her eyes shut.  
  
“How can you _stand_ it?” she asked him in his ear just before they rounded the last, rumpled scale corner and saw Harry and his snakes standing ahead. “He’s not human, and surely even someone like you must balk at sleeping with someone who can twine around you and crush you in bed.”  
  
“It’s exciting,” Draco said simply.  
  
Pansy pulled back and stared at him, then snorted. “I believe it, when you say it,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that I would believe it if anyone else said it.”  
  
“Luckily, no one else has the same rights to Harry,” Draco said, and then they stepped around the corner and he saw Harry waiting for them.  
  
Draco’s tongue promptly clung to the roof of his mouth, and he couldn’t have said whether that was desire or surprise or simply the shock of seeing Harry like that, snakes twined around him, sparks falling from his hair and his eyes, the white snake dancing, fully comfortable with himself and his Dark magic.  
  
“You can _have_ him,” Pansy said into Draco’s ear, and shoved past him, climbing rapidly up the flattened snake and onto the back of the large one. She kept her back turned, but Draco could see the shudders that worked through it.  
  
Not even for Pansy’s sake—and they had been friends for a long time—could Draco make himself hurry this moment, though. He let his eyes take in everything, the black-silver scales Harry wore and the way he moved and swayed, and then smiled and came up the snake-carpet in a few easy bounds.  
  
“I told you that you could find your way to this path,” he said softly, taking Harry’s hand.  
  
Harry smiled at him. “I know. You always had more faith in me than I had in myself.” Then he paused and tilted his head to the side. “Well. More faith in me since my Parseltongue started developing, anyway.”  
  
He sounded as if he wanted to forget about what had happened between them when they were still children, and Draco was more than happy to gratify that whim. He kissed Harry, leaning towards him, and Harry sighed and opened his mouth.  
  
“We should move.” Millicent, near the front of the giant snake and its swaying heads. “I only agreed to give you a distraction, Draco, not come with you into the Department of Mysteries. Are you going to get on with it and let me use this distraction, or not? It doesn’t get the less dangerous for waiting.”  
  
Draco pulled away from Harry with a little sigh, and spent a moment smoothing Harry’s hair down. He looked up at Draco with panting, parted lips and a dazed face, the slits in his eyes widening until Draco thought he could see the abyss where the original Darkness came from.  
  
“Coming,” he said, and then bent down to whisper into Harry’s ear. “But not the way I wish I was.”  
  
Harry laughed, and touched his shoulder, and then turned around and gestured sharply towards the giant snake’s mouths, his hands moving as if he were picking up reins. The snake started and moved hard to the side, and then they were gliding around the twists and turns of a path Draco could barely glimpse but found impressive.  
  
 _He’s laughing. At something I said._ Draco leaned his head on top of Harry’s and put his arms around him and stood there, body automatically adjusting to the way the giant snake looped and twisted, feeling the slight, cool brush of the white serpent against his chin.  
  
 _This is a life I could be happy to have, without risk. If only it was like this all the time._  
  
But it wouldn’t be, which meant they had to go out there and win the battle for such moments again, and again, and again.  
  
 _I can do that. I can happily do that._


	22. The Snake Devours

  
The Runespoor-basilisk stopped moving and raised all three heads high in the air. Harry thought he was the only one who felt the little darting, pricking jabs at his control, like tongues from all its mouths. _This is where the path ends. You will get off me and not return?_  
  
Harry heard the white serpent hiss indignantly, but he stroked his back, and the snake calmed. Harry shook his head as he leaped off the larger snake and tore open the darkness with a slash from the golden-green serpent. _I don’t know. We might have to flee this way._  
  
The Runespoor turned sulkily away. Harry called softly to the others, making sure to look at his own hands so it would come out in English. Yes, his hands weren’t the most human part of him, but they were different enough from anything snakes carried around to do the trick. “Hurry up. This is the part where we can get into the office I found last time.”  
  
Draco was the first to join him, of course. Harry didn’t have time to touch him—he was busy both tearing the gate and trying to sense if anyone was waiting for them beyond it—but he enjoyed having him near, the solid energy that seemed to burn like the light of diamonds beneath his skin.  
  
Bulstrode joined them next, tossing the little black thing in her hand up and down. “Just let me know where you want the distraction,” she murmured to Draco, barely moving her lips.  
  
“I’ll let you know,” Draco said, and watched Harry.  
  
Parkinson came last, cringing and creeping, and obviously keeping her eyes averted from Harry as if there was something indecent about the sight of him. Harry kept his head bowed and didn’t glance back at her. It would only distract _him_ right now, and he thought he could smell someone in the office.  
  
Then the gate was fully open, and Harry heard the indrawn breath and the sound of wizards scrambling to their feet. He leaned a hand on the white snake and closed his eyes, and felt, through the vibrating bones of his head, more than one pair of footsteps coming towards them. He nodded and opened his eyes. “People there.”  
  
“Now, Millicent,” Draco said.  
  
Bulstrode swept through the hole and tossed the black thing high in the air. Then she did something else, something that seemed to wrap her in a writhing silver web. Harry blinked and stared, the snake sniffed, and found her scent vanishing. When the web collapsed, she was gone.  
  
 _It isn’t Apparition, but it is as good as,_ said the white serpent approvingly. _She was serious when she said that she didn’t want to come with us on the attack.  
  
You like that?  
  
I like it that we have someone besides the cold one who tells the truth, _ the white serpent said, and Harry could tell without looking that he would be glancing towards Parkinson.  
  
Harry started to respond, and then a horrible, ringing shriek filled the room ahead of them. The shrieks quickly shrank smaller, and smaller. Harry could feel that someone was still in the room because of the way the white serpent cocked his head and hissed, but their feet had grown considerably lighter.  
  
“Draco?” Harry whispered, and saw the light gleaming in Draco’s eyes as he reached out and caught Harry’s wrist to draw him in.  
  
“Come see,” he whispered, and Harry jumped through the gate beside him as though Draco had been the one who opened it.  
  
But he hadn’t been, and Harry was going to remember that, was going to remember that, after all, he was capable of doing some important things.  
  
The room was full of scurrying mice, rearing up and trying to grab their wands with helpless paws. Harry laughed, and then glanced at the door of the office. The smoke had spread out there, and from the sounds of squeaking, more than the Unspeakables in this one small room had become rodents.  
  
And the white snake was stirring on his shoulder, and Harry could feel the spirits of other snakes coming to life around his feet, with their darting bodies and their wide mouths perfect for the eating of mice.  
  
Draco laughed, quietly. “I see now what Millicent meant when she said that I would like the distraction.” Harry glanced at him and found Draco standing with his arms extended in front of him, magic twitching and crawling and curling up his palms, and gaze fixed on the mice. “You can eat them if you want to, Harry.”  
  
“ _Must_ you?” Parkinson, who stopped behind Draco and stood there with her arms folded as if she was at a boring meeting. Harry had to look closely to see the way her locked arms trembled, and the way she closed and opened her eyes with little swallows, as if she were fighting nausea. “Such a feast with human jaws would be more than a little disgusting.”  
  
“His snakes can eat them,” Draco said, eyes fixed on Harry as if he never wanted to look anywhere else. “And I don’t care if it’s technically murder. They did worse than that to us, or could have, if they took us on the Dark path.”  
  
Harry thought about it. He could feel the white snake’s hunger as a yearning in the middle of his own stomach, an abyss going down to Merlin knew what depths, and it _was_ something to know that the Unspeakables wouldn’t trouble them anymore after this—  
  
But no, it would do too much damage to the cause of Dark Arts that Malfoy wanted to forward. And if one of these Unspeakables had information about Ron and Hermione, or if someone who did heard what had happened to them, then it could damage their ability to get his friends back, too. Why confess where Ron and Hermione were when they thought Harry and Draco would kill them?  
  
“No, it’s all right,” he said, and pulled the other snakes back into no more than a dream of mist, and stroked the white serpent until he calmed down and curled around Harry’s throat like a sulky necklace. “But why don’t you gather up their wands? It’ll give you something else to study, and restrict what they can do even if they start to change back before we’re out of here.”  
  
Draco smiled at him. “You’re so good to me, Harry,” he murmured, and began moving his wand through the Summoning Charm. Unspeakable wands sprang up off the floor like grasshoppers and flew towards him.  
  
Harry grinned back and started to turn away, only to catch Parkinson’s expression. She stood so still that the white serpent’s hunting instincts picked up again, and stared at Harry with glazed eyes.  
  
“What?” Harry demanded. God, she reacted badly when he acted like a snake and when he didn’t act like one. Harry was starting to lose his worry about her opinion, because it was all too plain that he could do nothing right, in her view.  
  
Parkinson’s eyes snapped back into human focus again, and she straightened, shaking her head. “Nothing. I’m only surprised that you would take the chance to show mercy to our enemies when they could strike at our backs.”  
  
“I don’t know how long Bulstrode’s spell will last, but I don’t think we need to worry about that,” Harry said, flat as a snake’s nose, and turned away.  
  
So that was it. She had expected him to leap at the chance to eat and murder his enemies, and he had caught her off-guard when he didn’t take it.  
  
 _She was so concerned about me not being Slytherin enough, and then she’s surprised when I act like a Gryffindor,_ Harry thought, and stomped to the door of the office. He almost hoped that Bulstrode’s spell had missed a few Unspeakables and there were still some human ones down the corridor who wanted to fight.  
  
But it didn’t look as though there were. The corridor was alive with small, hurrying dark bodies that made the white serpent stir again, and something smaller and dark red down at the end of it, which glowed like an eye—  
  
“ _Down!”_ Harry shouted, so loudly that he could only hope it was in English and not in Parseltongue, because he felt like he had to make them obey right then.   
  
The white serpent was already clinging to his shoulder. Harry turned and leaped over Draco’s head, landing in a crouch on the wall as serpent heads shot out of his neck and shoulders and locked their fangs in place through the stone. He couldn’t see any sign of Parkinson, who presumably knew enough to duck and shield herself, but Draco was still standing in front of the door, staring at the red light as if he wanted to know what it was.  
  
Harry snarled, and his legs twisted and flowed. A single huge coil descended, picked Draco up, and snagged him close to Harry’s side, trussed, before Harry could even decide if he was changing shape or summoning a real snake. Summoning a real one, it seemed, since the shape was now split off from him and wrapped around Draco, a gleaming python with scales like shields.  
  
“What—” Draco began.  
  
“Your obsession with knowledge is going to _kill you_ ,” Harry hissed back, and whether Draco could understand what he was saying or not, he shut up. “Now. _Keep your eyes closed._ ” He reached out and smoothed his hand down Draco’s face, over his eyelids. When he pulled them back, they were shut.  
  
He closed his own eyes and felt the white serpent hide his lidless ones against Harry’s neck. The snake cradling Draco had its head tucked under one curve of the immense body. They were as safe as Harry knew how to be from the thing that was coming.  
  
The thing that he had learned about in the Aurors, although the Unspeakables had removed the artifact the moment the case was done. That they would let it loose to protect them, although they didn’t have much idea of how to control it, surprised Harry not at all. _Bloody Unspeakables._  
  
There was the sound of soft footsteps, marked here and there by the _clink_ of a nail against stone floor. Harry felt Draco stir, and silently cursed him to hell and back. Being curious about this creature wasn’t enough reason to _look_ at it.  
  
He wondered if Draco would note the difference in calling it a creature sometimes and an artifact at others, and ask him to be more specific. Then he rolled his eyes behind his closed lids.  
  
 _Great, now I’m thinking like him,_ he thought, and heard the sniffing.  
  
He shut his eyes more tightly and reached out to make sure that he could feel Draco’s smooth shoulder as well as smooth scales beside him. He was worried about Parkinson, in a distant way, but she could probably take care of herself.  
  
*  
  
Draco was breathing hoarsely, and not just because the python had nearly driven all the air out of his lungs when it grabbed him.  
  
He knew what was below them, snuffling its way along the floor, or thought he did. They had once been called sighthounds, a calm, innocent name that gave no clue to their real powers unless you were a breeder or knew someone who was. They had keen noses that allowed them to track prey and magic-enhanced metal legs that let them run for hours, a blend of artifact and animal so perfect Draco had tried to get one before he understood how hideously expensive they were.  
  
And if they met your eyes…  
  
Draco shivered. Their eyes were the _real_ way they hunted, and that was why you could be relatively safe as long as you stayed out of their reach and didn’t look at them. They would track your scent, know you were there, but they couldn’t kill without a gaze.  
  
But none of the books Draco had read on sighthounds included a good picture, and the temptation to look was overwhelming.  
  
 _Your obsession with knowledge is going to_ kill _you,_ said Harry’s voice in his head.  
  
Harry’s voice that he might never hear again if he gave in and looked, either because he would be a shattered mind trapped in a broken husk or because Harry would be angry that Draco had jeopardized the entire mission and wouldn’t _want_ to talk to him.  
  
Draco reached out and stroked the smooth scales on Harry’s leg, up and down, reveling in the way that invisible tongues brushed against his palm. Then he dropped his hand and waited, until he heard the snuffling became a baffled snarl, and the click of nails as the sighthound turned and left again.  
  
When he opened his eyes, it was Harry’s face he looked into.  
  
Harry shook his head back and forth, but his eyes were bright and fond, and he reached down and briefly trailed his hand through Draco’s hair. Then he faced downwards again, and the white serpent on his shoulder shot its tongue out.  
  
“It’s safe,” Harry said. The snake on Draco released its hold, and Draco could climb to the floor.  
  
“The sighthound will have warned them,” he said. “At least, when it comes back without a human personality ripped from its body, they’ll know that something went wrong and it didn’t manage to break us.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “I think that most of the Unspeakables who could read its messages are running around as mice right now. They might be in as much danger from it as we would be.” He looked around. “Where’s Parkinson?”  
  
“Here.” Pansy unfolded herself from a shadow, and shook her hair back, smoothing a knot out of it with a grimace. Draco saw the way her hands shook with the simple motion, and wanted to hiss at her. What did she _want?_ Harry hadn’t shifted shape, had saved Draco’s life, and had saved his sanity, perhaps, by convincing him not to peer at the sighthound. Draco was starting to wonder if they should have left Pansy at home, useful though she could be.  
  
Then Pansy stared down the corridor, and Draco realized she had been shaken from fear of the sighthound, instead.  
  
Well, yes. Something that could break and crumble your bones and your skin and your mind down to the smallest particles and go away wearing your personality as a hat was perhaps something to be afraid of.  
  
Draco passed her, and let his hand touch her back as he did so. Then he said, “We should go, and find your friends, and plant our seeds, and leave here.”  
  
Harry had started to nod in response, the human gesture sitting oddly on his scaled body and the white serpent’s coils around his throat, but now he stopped. “What do you mean, plant your seeds?”  
  
“ _Our_ seeds,” Draco corrected, smiling at him. “Well, really, Harry, did you think we would let the Unspeakables get away with threatening Pansy in her own home and kidnapping your friends? Not to mention the grudge they probably harbor against us for breaking in once before. We should take care of them before they can try to fuck with us.”  
  
“Settling a grudge preemptively,” Harry said. “Just like you.” But he was smiling. “Just tell me what these seeds are.”  
  
Pansy was the one who opened her hand and showed Harry the three small white seeds on her palm. “Some compacted magic,” she said. “Held in place by some of the spells that you learn on the Dark paths, when you’re _actually_ experienced.”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrow at her, but said nothing, and Draco wanted to cheer. If she felt well enough to talk to Harry like that, to his _face,_ then she felt well enough that she probably wouldn’t run in mindless fear anymore.  
  
“All right,” Harry said. “Which doesn’t tell me what they are, you understand.”  
  
“The principle is simple,” Draco said. “You could think about it with Muggle drinks, Blaise tells me, although I was never so vulgar as to drink them myself. You put something under pressure, something that could potentially fountain up. In the case of the Muggle drinks, carbonation. In the case of the seeds, magic.” He grinned at Harry, who did comprehend, from the way his eyes were widening. “And then you shake it.”  
  
“ _Shit_ ,” Harry said. “Won’t that destroy the Department of Mysteries?”  
  
“I doubt it,” Draco said. “Too many strong wards here, too many artifacts, too many layers of magic that will probably snap into place as soon as the explosions go deep enough. But it makes a good distraction. And it makes a very good message.” He yawned. “One that they can’t even spread around too much, because the public wouldn’t like some of what they do here. There are costs as well as benefits to calling yourselves Unspeakables.”  
  
“But in the meantime, you’re going to take out some of their artifacts,” Harry said.  
  
“You don’t think that I would do this for _no_ payment, do you?” Pansy asked, and faced down the corridor again. She touched one of the keys glowing around her neck, a crystalline one with many swirls and loops and dragons carved on it that Draco had often wished to examine more closely. The problem was that it didn’t seem to exist away from Pansy. She looked at it, and frowned. “Potter’s friends are in this direction, it says, but it can’t tell me an exact route. I think—I think that they must be in separate rooms, or behind a ward that makes it seem so.”  
  
Harry looked up, his eyes flashing. The scales on his body melted and became a nest of whipping vipers. “If they’ve hurt them,” he whispered.   
  
He didn’t need to say the rest of what the sentence would have contained. Draco shivered when he felt the magic dancing across his skin, biting at his hips and joints, and reached out to trace the white snake’s head with one finger. The white snake put up with it; in fact, Draco thought a tongue briefly dragged along the tip of the finger.  
  
“If they’ve hurt them, of course we’ll make the Unspeakables pay,” Pansy said. Draco was glad to notice that she didn’t seem to be reacting as badly to the mere proximity of Harry as she had been before, though she did keep her head turned away from his scales and his snake. “But we don’t know that yet.” She held out her hand in front of her and tossed a key up that hung in the middle of the air. Pansy closed her eyes, communing with it. Draco watched the golden sparks fall and wished he knew what they said.  
  
Harry caught his eye and shook his head. Draco raised his eyebrows. _I restrained myself with the sighthound, didn’t I?_ he mouthed.  
  
Either Harry didn’t understand the mouthed words or he didn’t think they counted, because he turned back towards Pansy when she exclaimed. “What?” Harry demanded. A comma of black hair had fallen down in front of his eyes, with a shimmer to it that said it might be growing scales.  
  
“They’re in separate rooms,” Pansy whispered, nodding her head, her hair _shushing_ gently against her skin. “And they’re in chains. Behind wards that I’ve never seen before, and don’t know how to break.” She opened her eyes. “I don’t know how to reach them.”  
  
“You said this was the corridor that led to them?” Harry strolled towards the door of the office again.  
  
“I can’t tell how directly,” Pansy snapped back. “Honestly, Potter, if you ever listened to anything I said, you would realize—”  
  
Harry launched into a straightforward run, his head bowed and his legs pumping. His mouth was set in so grim a line that Draco didn’t even think of trying to talk him out of it. Besides, the shadows next to Harry crawled and ran with snakes. He was more likely to be a danger to anything he encountered than the other way around.   
  
“He really loves his friends,” Pansy mused.  
  
That was the voice that meant she was reconsidering some hasty conclusions; Draco had heard it most often at Hogwarts in their final year. He nodded to her. “Remember that,” he said, and because it was just the two of them together in the room, Pansy didn’t pretend that she thought Draco was warning her against hurting Weasel and Granger.  
  
She only nodded, and followed Harry. Draco came behind her, his hand cocked and magic shimmering on the surface of his skin, gathering up abandoned wands as he went.  
  
*  
  
Harry was sure that he would know when he came to the wards that held him back from Ron and Hermione. Things had changed between them, and he trusted and worked with people they would have been horrified to know, but this was the deepest bond in his life, the oldest. He _had_ to feel where they were trapped.  
  
But he reached the end of the corridor without seeing or feeling anything, and when he stopped and stared around, the white snake rose and said, _Brother, the rooms are not in the same position as they were a moment before.  
  
What? _ But Harry saw what the white serpent meant when he turned his head. He had ignored the doors that he thought led to other offices, because they didn’t have wards on them and that meant they weren’t his friends’ prisons. He knew there had been a row to the left and a row to the right, though. Now they were splayed in front of and behind him, instead, and when he backed up a step, his heel bumped a wall that hadn’t been there a moment before.  
  
 _It’s as though we stand on an island, and the corridor revolves around it,_ the white serpent responded, head swaying back and forth. The gold threads in his scales were brighter than Harry had ever seen them, and they were dripping sparks and thinner threads towards the floor, as if that could anchor them.   
  
Harry started to ask how the white snake knew that, and then gave up. The white snake was sensitive to forms of magic that Harry had never known existed and to bonds like the one Draco had wanted to establish with him that could be real before Harry noticed them. He was probably right in this case, too.  
  
 _A defense of the Department._ Harry gestured, and with the simplest snap of his wrist, a blue-black cobra was coiling in front of him. Harry nodded to it. _Find the true direction north, and point me to it._  
  
The cobra started to stretch out along the length of Harry’s arm, then paused. Its red tongue flickered out, and the white snake said, _It cannot find the direction. Perhaps that direction does not exist in this place, at this moment._  
  
So now you’re the speaker for other snakes, too? Harry asked, to contain his discomfort. He vanished the black cobra and turned around, searching for some device that would make the corridor stand still. The Unspeakables couldn’t make it an endless revolving floor, or they would get lost and confused themselves.  
  
There was a click. A sniff. The glow of red ahead of him, like the tail end of a banked fire.  
  
That was all the warning Harry had—well, that and the white snake’s scream, come too late—before the sleek, armed shape of the sighthound came out of a door and Harry found himself staring into its eyes.


	23. Saved By the Strangling Coil

  
Harry could feel the shredding process beginning, the way that his soul tore loose from its roots. His bones extended in new directions and snapped, and the red embers in the sighthound’s eyes came closer and closer, reaching out and shaking, shattering and tearing, locating what he would have most wanted to keep safe and scooping them out…  
  
 _Brother!_  
  
Harry found that awareness of that voice had not deserted him. It was the white serpent, and he still danced and sang and hissed and urged Harry to move and look away from the sighthound. The torrent of Parseltongue words poured past Harry’s ears, or whatever he truly used to hear them, and Harry knew he should respond.  
  
But the sighthound was closer, those silver legs ending in stone claws on the floor, and the fire was burning. Harry leaned closer, hands heavy on his knees, to give the sighthound a better look at him.  
  
Something squealed. Something whipped. Something lashed.  
  
And Harry was squirming on the floor, his spine longer than it had been, his neck flexible, his fangs extending from his upper jaw despite the immense strength of his coils, transformed into a snake deadlier than the anaconda form he usually assumed, and he was more than squirming, he was _angry._  
  
He lunged forwards. His fangs turned for a moment on the dog’s silver legs, but then found the vulnerable flesh above that, and sank home. The sighthound squealed and tried to run. Harry hung on, flinging one coil of his body around its back and bearing down until he heard the bones snapping the way the connections of his soul had done, and pumped all the venom down his fangs that he could.  
  
The dog flopped and screamed. Its voice was higher and shriller than a human’s. Harry thought so, anyway, because in this form he could more feel sounds than hear them. He leaned in and changed his venom, to something longer-lasting and worse. The sighthound’s veins bulged, turned black, and erupted from its body, sending stream after stream of thick, soapy dark liquid to the floor.  
  
The poison had reached deep enough by now to touch the heart, which Harry felt as a gong against the side of his head, the part of him that rested on the sighthound’s chest. The creature began to thrash again, though, and Harry knew the poison had not yet succeeded. He was tired of being held up by one enemy, and struck again, placing and planting the poison, watching as the ember-eyes widened. The sighthound’s tongue hung out. It kicked once with stiff legs, and then the neck collapsed sideways and it lay there like that, injured, poisoned, dead.  
  
Harry pulled himself away with a hiss and turned his head. The white serpent waited for him in a corner of the corridor, bowing his neck when Harry looked at him.  
  
 _I am glad that you survived, brother, with no more than a slight tear to your soul,_ he said, and slid forwards to wrap around Harry exactly as he did when Harry was a human, although in this form, his tail lay on the coils instead of twining all the way around.  
  
 _I don’t know how I survived without worse damage,_ Harry said, his tongue flickering out. He caught the scents of mice behind him, and Parkinson, and Draco, whose scent was flooded and flecked with Dark magic and coolness. He began to slither in that direction, leaving the broken corpse of the sighthound behind him. The corridor had gone still again, as though the Unspeakables’ defense had been broken by the weight of his body on it. _I was looking the sighthound in the eye by the time I shifted._  
  
For long moments, the white serpent was silent, scales rubbing against scales as Harry advanced towards the smells of his companions. Then he said, _I think it has to do with you no longer being entirely human. These sighthounds, if I understand them aright from your mind, were made to feed on human personalities and souls.  
  
I thought I was still human. Capable of changing form, but no more than that. _ Harry flicked out his tongue so hard that he felt it catch and tear a little on the point of a fang. He lowered his head to the floor and felt the cool texture of the stone on his scales for long moments, trying to calm down. _A human with Dark magic._  
  
The white serpent stayed silent again, until Harry had reached the corner that he knew Parkinson was hiding behind. Then he said, _I think that you are less human than you believed. With greater gifts. And you changed when the sighthound’s hold on you became powerful enough, which suggests that you were flowing into a snake in the middle of the pain. Perhaps you are human some of the time, and serpentine the rest._  
  
Harry flicked his tongue out in response, and then changed back, grimacing as he felt his spine ache and then snap back into place with the vanishing of his tail. Parkinson wouldn’t be happy.   
  
_Draco won’t care._  
  
That could have been the voice of his thoughts or the white serpent. At the moment, it comforted Harry no matter what it was. He pushed off from the floor, stumbled, caught himself on the wall, shook his head to try and accustom himself to hearing sounds again, and then rounded the corner.  
  
Parkinson had her wand aimed at him, but it shook. Draco stood beyond her with his arms folded and his large eyes fixed on Harry. Harry spoke to him, so that he didn’t have to think about the expression on Parkinson’s face. “I saw the sighthound, and it started to tear me apart with its eyes. But I changed into an anaconda in the middle of it, and poisoned it. I don’t think the Unspeakables have another one. They usually hunt in packs, and it would have rushed out and joined the other one when it saw me poisoning it.”  
  
“How could you poison it?” Parkinson sounded as if she would break and run. “You don’t have fangs in that form.”  
  
“This time, I did,” Harry said, glancing at her. “I think my magic knew what I would need, and granted that gift to me.”  
  
Parkinson shut her eyes. Her face had gone so still that Harry would have said she was meditating, or practicing Occlumency, except he could also make out the rapid rise and fall of her chest. She lowered her wand, but it took a physical effort, as though she was pushing against air.  
  
“If the sighthound is dead, then we can venture down the corridor, I think,” Draco said. “In a group this time, and without the speed that you tried.” He eyed Harry. “You should realize by now that you’ll be safer in company.”  
  
“I don’t know that,” Harry said. He might as well be blunt if he was going to actually rescue Ron and Hermione, not get into trouble or go into battle with a threat at his back. “I want to know why Parkinson hates shapeshifters, and I want to know now. Is she going to suddenly curse me instead of our enemies? I want to know.”  
  
Draco looked at Parkinson. She stood there with her head bowed and her breath coming in and out in slow, large puffs. She waved a hand without looking up. “You might as well tell him,” she said. “I’ll need to take a few minutes to get back to myself and the point where I can fight beside him without wanting to kill him.”  
  
Harry faced Draco with his arms folded. _This ought to be good._ He had fought beside people he hated before, and he had never tried to kill them. If Parkinson prided herself so much on being Slytherin and more practical than the stubbornly Gryffindor Harry, she ought to have been able to do the same thing.  
  
The white serpent hissed agreement on his shoulder.  
  
*  
  
Draco sighed. He could wish that Harry had not asked now; he could wish that Pansy had explained before now. But wishes would not change reality. He had learned that the year that he cowered against walls of one sort or another—classroom walls, walls in the Manor—and wished for some means to stop the torture and the pain in front of him. Only action helped.  
  
“All right,” he said. “A werewolf tortured Pansy.”  
  
“If it was only that, I could get over it,” Pansy said, her voice slight and sharp and small, like a glass dagger.  
  
Draco looked at her in silence, wondering if she wanted to tell her own story after all. But she waited, and then flapped her hand a moment later, silently giving Draco permission to do it for her.  
  
Draco nodded, and turned to face Harry. “She was investigating where one particular Dark path went. It opened into the lair of some werewolves who had managed to keep away from wizards and thus from the registration and the automatic kill-on-sight policy that the Ministry adopted some years back. One of them recognized her for what she was and—held her there. He threatened to bite her, but never did. In the end, she managed to escape.”  
  
“That doesn’t explain what it was like,” Pansy whispered.  
  
Harry turned to face Pansy. “Then you tell me,” he said, his voice less loud and offensive than Draco would have expected from him when he was urging Pansy to do something that was so much against her inclinations. “You’re the only one who can give me the real perspective, I think.”  
  
Pansy lifted her head and studied Harry for long enough that Draco thought she was starting to emerge from the fear and see him as an individual, as she had done before Harry shifted. Then she nodded.  
  
“He threatened to bite me, kill me, turn me, rape me, eat me.” Pansy’s voice was flat, but Draco could hear the resonances underneath the surface, and hoped that Harry could, too. “For hours. He kept me there, caging me with his claws, and whispered the words. The rest of his people were asleep, or away, or they didn’t care what he did with me. He told me that if I moved at all, he’d have me. So I stood there, and my legs trembled, and my eyes blinked, and each time he made a move like he would bite me or cut me. And he turned his eyes to wolf eyes, and his fingernails to wolf claws, and he showed me his teeth. He was very good at only changing parts of his body. The mingling of human and animal features is what scared me about you, and disgusted me.”  
  
“But you managed to get away in the end,” Harry said, looking at Pansy’s hands as if he expected to see fur sprouting on the back of them.  
  
“Only _you_ , Potter, would minimize my suffering like that because it wasn’t exactly the same as your own,” Pansy said. Draco could hear the savage recoil in her tone, and knew she hadn’t expected Harry’s disapproval, not really.  
  
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Harry said, jerking his eyes back up, and taking a step forwards as if he would touch her. Draco got hastily between them, because he didn’t think that was a good idea right now.   
  
“Then enlighten me.” Pansy laid her wand along her arm and aimed it casually at a corner of the room. Draco wondered if Harry realized the angle; this way, the spell or whatever else she used could reflect off the stone and hit him. The white serpent, at least, recognized that, from his deadly stillness. “What could you say that would make it better?”  
  
“I only mean that you did escape in the end,” Harry whispered. “That he didn’t hurt you. That you did triumph.”  
  
“He didn’t _hurt_ me,” Pansy said, and her teeth would have done credit to a werewolf after all.  
  
“I mean,” Harry said, and looked so totally wretched that Draco wondered how anyone could consider him a powerful and evil Dark Lord, “physically.” He rubbed a hand over his face, and then dropped it and gave Pansy the sort of embarrassed smile that Draco had seen him wear in Hogwarts. “Sorry. I’m not good at this.”  
  
Pansy spent a few seconds watching him, and then sniffed. “No. You’re not.” She turned to look down the corridor. “Anyway. That’s why I hate shapeshifters. I did escape without becoming one, but if you think that experience wasn’t enough to prejudice me against them—”  
  
Harry opened his eyes and mouth and then shut them quickly. Draco approved. If he had been about to tell her her prejudice was wrong, now was not the time. And if he hadn’t been, it probably would have been something else as clueless and wrong at the present moment.   
  
“We need to rescue Ron and Hermione, sighthounds and spinning corridors or not,” Harry said, and turned to Draco. “Do you have a plan?”  
  
“I do,” Draco said lightly, which made Pansy glare at him. Draco shrugged back at her. Just because she had concentrated on her own argument with Harry and her own magic was no reason to be surprised when he could make a contribution.  
  
“What is it?”  
  
 _How good is it to have Harry watching me like that, waiting for my help?_ Draco thought, and had to fight to keep from closing his eyes as pleasure flooded his body. Keeping his gaze locked on Harry’s face, he reached into his robes and removed a smooth, flat mirror.  
  
Harry blinked, but said, “Mirrors got us into trouble here once before. Are you sure this one will work?”  
  
Draco nodded and decided to show them, instead of wasting time explaining. He crouched down and held the mirror out in front of him, tilting it so that it reflected a section of the corridor and the office doorframe, but not the whole thing.  
  
Immediately, the reflection bulged and rippled, and a dark creature started to life out of it, a creature with slender legs and a long neck like the neck of a greyhound in silhouette. It turned back and forth, and then the dark creature raced forwards to the point in the corridor that the mirror reflected. It halted and turned its head to look back at them.  
  
“Draco.” Pansy’s voice had a keenly controlled edge that made Draco wince a little, but, well, he had invited this when he didn’t tell them about his weapon, and it was more than enough to see the surprise and gratification on Harry’s face, or should be for any reasonable Dark wizard. “What is that thing?”  
  
“Something that can guide us,” Draco said. “It will disarm any traps that the Unspeakables have laid, as long as I reflect its route with this.” He waved the mirror back and forth, and the creature scuttled up the walls as the new reflections came into view, checking them and then freezing again. “I should have used it in the first place, but I wanted to let you check, and then, well, Harry charged.”  
  
Harry flushed, and nodded. “Well, let’s use it now. I hate to think of what Ron and Hermione are suffering.”  
  
Draco reminded himself that Harry would probably feel just as bad for Draco if _he_ was the one captured and suffering, and then reminded himself that he would have never been so stupid as to let the Unspeakables capture him in the first place. So he need feel no jealousy of Weasley and Granger.  
  
 _Jealous of Weasley and Granger. There’s a thought I believed I would never think._  
  
He went forwards at a crouch, aiming the mirror down the corridor, and as each new reflection came into being, the slender creature sprang forwards, aiming at new walls and doors and waving its legs over them. Now and then a ward that Harry must have bypassed struck out and sparked or snapped on its legs, and once the greyhound-like jaws snapped and severed one. Draco smiled. _My magic is still the best magic._  
  
Harry touched him once on the back as they followed, in a way that seemed to say he agreed with Draco. Draco shook his head, smiled, and kept his eyes focused forwards so that his pride wouldn’t distract him.  
  
Which was why he saw the way the shadows moved and boiled off to the side, and how a figure in a grey robe came clattering towards them as if moving on wheels.  
  
“Down, now,” Draco said calmly, aiming the mirror directly at the figure. He had no doubt that his creature could take care of it, but it would be messy, and he didn’t want Harry complaining about his snakes or Pansy about her face and hair.  
  
The creature ran towards the Unspeakable, whose wand was moving up and down, his lips lagging behind in the incantation. Draco didn’t know what he had seen first, Draco’s creature or the way he was bent over the mirror, but either way, it seemed to stun him, and his weapon faltered.  
  
Then the creature reached him.  
  
It sprang, legs locking on his shoulders, jaws clamping down so that the slender head nestled under the Unspeakable’s chin. Then its body flexed and snapped backwards like one of Harry’s snakes, and the next moment, flesh and blood were flying. Draco ducked in spite of himself, and turned the mirror; he didn’t know exactly what would happen if the flying gore landed on the glass, but this was a time that he was willing to give up knowledge for the sake of survival.  
  
The Unspeakable’s head dropped to his chest in the next instant, and the slender creature rocked to the ground and stood there balancing for a few seconds. Then it began to lope down the corridor. Draco licked his lips and moved past the bloody mess that had been the defender, knowing Harry and Pansy were still behind him. Harry, he thought, wouldn’t abandon him no matter what, and Pansy could accept magic as violent as Harry’s provided that it didn’t come along with actual shapeshifting.  
  
They were going to find Harry’s friends and make the Unspeakables pay. Draco loved it when a plan functioned the way it was supposed to.  
  
*  
  
Harry wondered what the hell he and Parkinson would have done without Draco.  
  
Well. He probably wouldn’t be here, honestly; he would be searching Ron’s Place and wondering where the Ministry had taken his friends, or he would be in St. Mungo’s still crawling with snakes, or he would be dead. And Parkinson would be sitting at home undisturbed.  
  
This was the result of Draco finding out what they needed to know, setting up payments with his contacts and friends, and binding Harry and Parkinson together as allies. Harry wasn’t going to forget what he owed him.  
  
 _Even if I don’t have money to pay him back, there are other things I can do._  
  
Harry became aware that he was moving more solidly, as though he had a weight in his belly to balance him. He smiled and continued watching the corridor ahead. It didn’t branch yet, and the doors on either side of them stayed in the same place, to his relief. He didn’t want to have to cope with the revolving floor again.  
  
Then they did come to a fork, and Parkinson immediately stepped up beside Draco, nodding to get his attention. “This is where they are,” she whispered. “The two different places behind the wards that I sensed before.”  
  
Draco nodded to her, his face impassive, and then bent down and held the mirror so that it reflected the fork. The spider-hound scurried up the right corridor, halting in a moment and reaching out to pluck the air as if it was a web.  
  
“Ward,” Draco whispered, eyes half-closed when Harry looked at him. “A powerful one. I think this one will cost us to break.” He reached towards his collar, moving his hand slowly, as though the strength of the magic he meant to fetch out was reflected in the gesture he used to make it.  
  
“Oh, honestly, Draco, I can handle this one,” Parkinson said, and stepped forwards. Her hands held two keys each, Harry saw, all but one golden. The exception was a dark blue key that looked as if it was made of cobalt. Parkinson sketched it back and forth, muttering under her breath, and then looked up.  
  
Her face had gone pale. Harry immediately curled his hands around the white serpent and moved towards Draco.  
  
“This will more than cost us to break,” Parkinson whispered. “The ward is set up to hurt whoever’s behind it when it goes off.”  
  
“So, Harry’s friends,” Draco said, and tilted the mirror so that his creature had to scuttle up on the wall. Harry imagined that he could feel the cut-out eyes watching them in disgust. That he should hesitate to break the ward because of harm to something behind it would make no sense to the creature, Harry suspected.  
  
“Yes,” Parkinson said, and moved out of the way to let Harry in.  
  
Harry rested his hands on the air and tried to feel the ward, although he could have solved the problem already if he could do that. Then he turned abruptly to Parkinson. He knew his eyes were too wide and his breath came too fast, but he wasn’t going to apologize for that, not when it was Ron and Hermione on the line. “Do you know—”  
  
“I can’t tell you anything about what’s beyond the wards,” Parkinson said flatly, shaking her head. “I already mentioned that. Sorry, but it’s still true. Your friend Weasley could be there, or Granger, and there could be other wards that are tied to them and will hurt them if we break them. But I _can’t tell._ Sorry.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes and waited for a moment. Yes, he did believe that she was sorry, as he wouldn’t have before she told him about the origins of her fear of shapeshifters.  
  
But that didn’t solve the problem of how to rescue Ron and Hermione.  
  
 _Brother,_ said the white serpent, curling close and surrounding Harry’s ear with a curve of wet tongue. _We can go under and through, perhaps.  
  
You and me, or you and the other snakes? _ Harry asked, opening his eyes and turning his head. He could see Parkinson shuddering from the corner of his eye at the sound of the Parseltongue, and Draco pressing close with his face pale and fascinated. Harry had to ignore both reactions, though, because what his snake was saying was more important.  
  
 _The other snakes and I,_ said the white serpent, as prim as McGonagall correcting Harry’s grammar. His tongue darted out again. _There are subtle gaps in the wards, ones that were left because they believed that no creature could come through them. But snakes are long and slender, and can go through._  
  
Harry hesitated. Then he said, _The Unspeakables know about us now, or at least they know that we’re the ones who broke into the Department of Mysteries the last time. Wouldn’t they have set traps for snakes?_  
  
The white serpent stuck his tongue out again as though touching the subtle currents of scent circulating through the air, the ones Harry couldn’t sense unless he borrowed the snakes’ tongues. Then he twitched his neck back and forth. _I don’t sense other traps. I think we can make it._  
  
Harry swallowed and nodded, and explained the plan to Parkinson and Draco. Draco’s face didn’t change, although he reached out and let his hand hover above the white serpent’s neck, just at the place where it blended into his body. Parkinson bobbed her head sharply once and said, “If they can do it, let them do it. I know that I can’t.”  
  
Harry crouched down and closed his eyes, summoning the toughest snakes he could imagine, armored almost like lizards along the back, with dense scales and tough fins of skin and leather. They crawled around him when he opened his eyes, sand-colored and black, with darting tongues and glowing fangs.  
  
 _You won’t imagine extra protection for me?_ The white serpent arched up to touch him on the nose with his cheek.  
  
 _I know you don’t need it,_ Harry said, and let his hand smooth up and down his back.  
  
The white serpent tickled his ear with his tongue again, and then slid towards the wards. Behind him came the other snakes, which Draco could see, or barely see, from the way he squinted.  
  
Harry stepped back as they went through the wards, and waited, and hoped.


	24. Tails in a Tight Spot

  
Harry held his breath as he watched the snakes wriggle through the ward. For a moment, their bodies bent and rippled as if flowing underwater. Harry felt the magic of the ward reaching towards them, feeling them out, pulling and snagging and catching. He bit his lip, and winced. His fangs had grown again.  
  
“They’ll be all right,” Draco said.  
  
“You can’t know that,” Harry pointed out, and didn’t take his eyes off the snakes. The white serpent was in the lead, and had reached a point where the ward seemed to bend, gleaming, as if reflected in Draco’s mirror. He stuck out his tongue and ducked and corkscrewed his head, but the ward stayed the same. Then he tried to wriggle forwards.  
  
Harry winced as he felt the scream. It traveled up his arm and to the shoulder where the white serpent most frequently rested. And the scream went and on, the white serpent’s body jangling and jittering back and forth.  
  
 _I can’t stand it,_ Harry thought, and started to stretch one hand out into the ward.   
  
Draco seized his shoulder and tugged him back. “I’m not going to let you damage yourself,” he said calmly into Harry’s face, ignoring the way that Harry snapped at him with his fangs. “You can make another snake, if necessary. You can’t replace the limbs or the magic that the ward might damage.”  
  
“I don’t know how I made him in the first place!” Harry yelled, and turned back to the ward, ignoring Parkinson’s gestures for silence. They didn’t know who or what was in the corridor with them, but whatever it was had had plenty of time to come out and assault them by now. What was more _important_ was rescuing his brother, the snake Harry had created, the one who called Draco “cold one,” the most distinct personality he had ever imagined.  
  
By the time he faced the ward again, the white snake had slid past the twisted part of the reflection. He turned his head and flickered his tongue out at Harry, lidless eyes bright and scolding. Harry found himself sitting down on his arse before he thought about it, and blinked and smiled tentatively back.  
  
 _You should not worry so, brother,_ the white serpent said. He sounded tired, but his Parseltongue was still perfectly clear. _You should remember that I am not physical._ He flicked his tail at the black-and-tan snakes behind him. _And you should remember that I know more than any of them.  
  
You were screaming, _ Harry whispered back. Parkinson went taut beside him at the Parseltongue, but she would just have to live with it. Harry was forcing himself to live with the fact that he couldn’t reach through the ward and simply touch his brother.  
  
 _I was screaming because it did hurt me._ The white serpent coiled around something that looked like a black spiral to Harry and tapped it thoughtfully with his tongue. The spiral flickered and flamed and vanished. The serpent slid through where it had been and turned his head so that his eyes aimed at Harry again. _But it does not hurt now._  
  
Harry bit one knuckle and settled back on his heels, ignoring the way that Draco crouched down beside him. _Come back if it hurts you anymore._  
  
The white serpent shook his tail again, and reached the end of the ward. The snakes that had followed him spread out across the corridor. The white serpent darted his head in a complex pattern and issued a stream of hisses to the rest of the snakes. They joined together in a grid pattern, heads laid to each other’s tails, and the white serpent climbed on top of them and brought his tail sharply down.  
  
Harry’s eyes watered, the air blurred, his ears trembled, and the ward vanished. The white serpent climbed off the black grid and reared far enough that he could bow his head to Harry, the grinning Draco, and the gaping Parkinson.  
  
 _How did you do that?_ Harry demanded, racing forwards to scoop up his brother again. The black snakes spread out obediently in front of him. Harry eyed them and decided to keep them for the moment, in case they had to deal with other wards.  
  
 _It was simple enough,_ said the white serpent softly. _Why would it not be? I simply drew on your talent for finding new Dark paths and found one that opened into the middle of the ward. Then I told the others to assemble into a map of that Dark path and got up on top of them. When someone reaches through into the path from an unexpected direction, then it’s the same as walking the path and destroying the walls that guard it._ He paused, then added thoughtfully, _I wouldn’t recommend that anyone else use that path now, though._  
  
Harry shut his eyes and shook his head. _Great, now my snakes understand magical theory that I don’t._  
  
 _It was instinctive,_ said the white serpent comfortably. _I merely tried to put it into words.  
  
Don’t bother next time.  
  
Don’t ask, then, _ said the white serpent, and curled up with his head right next to Harry’s neck. _Brother._  
  
“How did they do that?” Draco interrupted, predictably enough.  
  
“I’ll tell you later,” said Harry, not trusting his own translation abilities from Parseltongue to English at that moment. He leaned forwards and waved his hand where the ward had been. No, it was gone, and when he strained his senses ahead, including having every snake tongue dart out at once, he couldn’t detect any Unspeakables. “I think this corridor is as safe to walk as it’ll ever be.”  
  
Parkinson grasped her keys and aimed them ahead for a moment, then opened her eyes and nodded to Draco. “I think he’s right.”  
  
Harry held back the snort he wanted to give, and moved down the corridor instead. He could feel the stone thrumming beneath his feet, but nothing lunged out at them. The doors were fewer now, and had no wards on them. Harry spread his hands out, watching as Draco’s creature once more darted ahead of them, and wondered if the wards were simply so subtle in this part of the Department of Mysteries that they would never sense them before they lashed out.  
  
Then he heard a weary grunt from ahead, and a voice said, “Harry?”  
  
 _Ron’s voice._  
  
Harry was charging ahead again before anyone else could tell him not to. At least the white serpent remained cool and confident and still on his shoulder, reassuring him that there were no more traps in the way. Draco’s creature bounded aside from him and flattened its sleek, small ears. Parkinson said something harsh, and even Draco called his name in a way that said he suspected harmful wards ahead.  
  
Harry couldn’t care. Couldn’t stop. Couldn’t slow down. Over and above and beyond the Parseltongue and the Dark magic, these were still the deepest loyalties in his life.   
  
And he didn’t care, or stop, or slow down, until he was through the door into a room that looked like a cross between a storage cupboard and a hastily-set-up office, and Ron was in his arms.  
  
*  
  
Pansy stood back with her arms crossed and shook her head when Draco looked at her. Draco shrugged back, and waited in the office doorway until Weasley and Harry were done babbling at each other. Harry _could_ have endangered them by dashing ahead like that, but he hadn’t actually done so, and Draco would wait to give a violent scolding until Harry ran into another sighthound.  
  
It wasn’t as bad as Draco had thought, really, sharing Harry’s attention with his friends. For one thing, Weasley could see _something_ on Harry’s shoulder where the white snake coiled, from the way his eyes kept wandering over there, and he winced frequently. Harry’s friends would still have trouble accepting his Parseltongue, and would probably never do it in the way Draco could. That guaranteed a bond between them which Weasley and Granger couldn’t replicate.  
  
And for another, Draco trusted in Harry’s conversion. He had made up his mind to accept Dark magic and walk the Dark paths, and he wouldn’t turn back now. He might regret—knowing Harry, more than once—because it wasn’t the same as choosing it freely, the way Draco and Pansy had. But Draco really didn’t think he would give it up or betray them.  
  
Weasley finally drew away from hugging Harry and looked at him with wet, messy eyes. Draco silently noted the red rims and evidence of tears that were already there. Well, the Unspeakables might have tortured him. It didn’t _necessarily_ mean that he was weak and unfocused.  
  
“They told me that you wouldn’t come,” Weasley whispered. “That you had already sent letters saying that you didn’t care what they did to us, and that Dark magic was more important to you than your friends.”  
  
Draco straightened. Harry opened his mouth, but too slowly, which meant Weasley’s reaction was Draco’s lawful prey. “And you _believed_ them?” he asked, slow, perfect drawl and slow headshake ready for when Weasley glared at him. “I wouldn’t have thought so, but I suppose there’s always a new depth to which a blood traitor will sink.”  
  
The white serpent on Harry’s shoulder reared and hissed at him, and Harry looked back over his shoulder, flashing his fangs. Draco felt Pansy’s nails digging into his arm— _claws_ would be a more accurate term, when she used them like that—but ignored it. He had needed to say that, and Weasley had needed to hear it.  
  
“Ron is not a blood traitor,” Harry said. “I won’t listen to you say that again.”  
  
“You will, if it fits the situation,” Draco said. “I know not all the old terms apply, but the way my parents taught them to me, a blood traitor is a coward who doesn’t face up to the consequences of his actions—who wants all the pleasant things, like house-elves, while ignoring the cost you pay to keep them. Weasley wants your sympathy, and for you to ignore that he was ready to believe you wouldn’t come.”  
  
“I didn’t say I _believed_ it.” Weasley was sinking his fingers into Harry’s shoulders, which made no sense to Draco, but he nobly forgave Weasley once he noticed the chains wound around him, linking him to the floor. “Just that that was what the Unspeakables had _said_.”  
  
“Ah,” Draco murmured, with a wise nod. “But you didn’t qualify it. You didn’t say that you immediately discounted the tales of those letters, or understood them as an intimidation tactic without accepting them into your heart. You implied that the experience was so horrible Harry should apologize.”  
  
Weasley tilted his head to the side as slowly as though a lead weight was hanging from his ear. “Are you _real_?” he asked. “Seriously?”  
  
Harry straightened up and turned to put himself between Draco and Weasley. “He doesn’t need to hear any more of that,” he whispered. “I never thought he believed what they were telling him. He only—he only wanted me to know.” He reached back and stroked Weasley’s shoulder with one scaled hand, while his face bulged out at the sides with venom. Draco looked at him with a little pity. He doubted Harry would bother with the venom sacs if he knew how hot they made Draco.  
  
“Perhaps he doesn’t need to hear any more of it, then,” Draco conceded, and let his head fall down in a graceful bow so that his hair swayed to a stop around his cheeks. “But you don’t need to have more guilt piled on you from your friends, either.”  
  
“They weren’t trying,” Harry said, and then shut his eyes and shook his head. “Hermione isn’t even _here_ ,” Draco thought he heard him mutter as he turned back to Weasley. “We’ll need to get you out of your chains and help you up on your feet, Ron,” he whispered. “Can you do that for me? Can you show me the location of the locks?”  
  
Draco sniffed, and stepped back so that he could stand beside Pansy, who kept giving him these agonizingly painful _meaning_ looks. He didn’t see what Granger not being there had to do with it.  
  
*  
  
Harry realized he was shaking as he knelt next to Ron. Draco’s words or the mere consequence of having a friend taken here, in the Department of Mysteries, where Merlin knew what could have happened to him?  
  
He decided that he didn’t have to care, and put his hands beneath Ron’s arms, whispering encouragement, as Ron began to lift the chains.  
  
“They always did up the locks in a specific order after they took me to the loo,” Ron said. “First the one on the left, then the bottom two on the right—from the bottom up—and then the one around my neck.” He touched the one that hung in the hollow of his throat like an ugly pendant, wincing.  
  
Harry nodded again and knelt down to examine the lock on the left. Ron caught his hand, and Harry looked up. Ron’s eyes were terrible in a way that made Harry squeeze his hand, and wish, for once, that Draco was out of the room.  
  
“I didn’t mean that I _believed_ them when they told me that you weren’t interested in saving me,” Ron whispered. “Only that was what they said. And why I was awfully glad to see you.”  
  
Harry just nodded back. Trying to put those things into words right now would lead to more arguments that weren’t important, as long as Ron was still a prisoner and Hermione remained locked up behind more of those wards.  
  
He did think, as he worked on the locks and conjured small blue snakes that could pop into the middle of the tumblers and report back from the inside, that Ron’s stare was lingering on his scaled neck, his fangs, his puffed-out cheeks. And that Ron flinched a time or two from meeting Harry’s eyes when he asked a question about the spells the Unspeakables had used on his locks.  
  
But that wasn’t something they could do anything about. _This_ was what was important, the smooth metal under his hands and the way Ron reached out to him sometimes.  
  
The last of the locks came undone, and Harry backed away. Ron slung his arms at the chains, and the links clattered to the floor. Ron stood up with an enormous stretch that made Harry smile. He could only imagine how being cooped up in chains for days at a time had felt. That was something that had never happened to him, despite all the shit flying around his life.  
  
“I know they took Hermione somewhere away down the corridor,” Ron said, and pointed out the door. “I never knew which room. They didn’t keep us together after they realized that you were trying to contact us by Floo,” he added bitterly. “They thought we were dangerous, or so they told us.”  
  
“Another intimidation tactic,” Draco said from behind Harry, his voice as smooth as the locks. “They would want you to believe—”  
  
“I know all about intimidation tactics,” Ron said flatly. “I was an Auror. I learned them.”  
  
“ _Was_?” Parkinson asked.  
  
Ron gave a twitch of his hands that Harry knew meant he was nervous. Ron’s body language was an open book to people who knew him—which, luckily, probably meant that they didn’t have to worry about either Parkinson or Draco learning it any time soon. “I don’t know what I’ll go back to. For all I know, the Ministry mandated that we be put down here, not just the Department of Mysteries. And it doesn’t matter right now. What matters is rescuing Hermione.”  
  
“We could stand to know, as Dark wizards, whether you’ll still be hunting us,” Parkinson muttered, but she stepped back and let Ron out into the corridor. Harry had to go around her, and pass close by Draco.  
  
Draco took his arm and held on for a minute, looking so steadfastly into his face that Harry blinked as he gazed back.  
  
“Good,” Draco said, and smiled at him as he released his arm. “I thought that you might have tried to change the way your eyes look to please Weasley.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Draco, but you don’t have to,” he said, stroking Draco’s hand quickly in passing. “I think that Ron can put up with the way I look long enough to rescue Hermione. That’s all I care about.”  
  
“Then you shouldn’t object to the way that I care about it,” Draco said smoothly. “Someone has to watch out for the bigger picture while you concentrate on the smaller one, after all.”  
  
Harry shut his eyes and stepped past Draco. Sometimes he thought he loved him, and sometimes he thought he would murder him if he had to listen to him for long enough.  
  
 _Well, at least half my life is normal, then._  
  
*  
  
Pansy dropped back towards Draco as they walked up the corridor towards the place where Weasley thought Granger had been taken. “I don’t really think they’ll manage to remove her as easily,” she murmured. “It would make sense for the Unspeakables to use different traps and wards on them, in case one of them was rescued.”  
  
Draco tilted his head, not quite in agreement, but did say, “It’s strange that the Unspeakables haven’t tried to attack us in some other way, now that the shock of Millicent’s distraction is past.”  
  
Pansy nodded, and faded away down the corridor. She could look for doors out that didn’t concern the Dark path where Harry’s giant snake waited, Draco thought. He trusted her more than anyone else in the Department with them at the moment, other than where her reactions to Harry were concerned.  
  
 _Or perhaps I trust her and Harry equally,_ he thought, as he stopped in front of the fork in the corridor and tilted the mirror so that his creature could run ahead of him again. _She has her weakness in her fear of shapeshifters, and Harry in his fear for his friends._  
  
He leaned back against the wall of the corridor and listened to the low-voiced debate between Harry and the Weasel.  
  
“I think the wards should be the same as the ones that I was behind,” Weasley muttered. “And you managed to break them without trouble.”  
  
Harry touched the white snake on his shoulder. Draco didn’t think he was aware of making the gesture anymore, but Weasley watched his hand apparently rise and rest on air—or so Weasley would see it—with a troubled expression. “I risked my snakes to do it,” Harry said. “Yes, they might be the same, but there’s no reason to _assume_ that. I’ll go slowly and come up with a kind of snake that can pass them.” He knelt down and began to look at the apparently empty air in front of him.  
  
Draco heard his creature scrape its claws and snap its teeth. As far as it was concerned, _it_ should have been the first one into the fray, but Draco knew it would have already disarmed the wards if it was capable of it.  
  
Weasley knelt down next to Harry. “Then it was your Parseltongue that got you this far,” he said. Draco listened keen-eared, wondering if that was a tone of resignation he heard to the Weasel’s voice. He could only hope so, for Harry’s sake.  
  
“It was,” Harry said, and then closed his eyes and rubbed his hands together. Smoke blossomed up from between them, and Draco thought he could make out eyes and tongues and delicately flicking bodies. But Harry held them out and towards the wards before Draco could make sure that he recognized them as snakes. They wriggled forwards and through the net of magic, and Weasley flinched.  
  
Draco would have, too, but the white snake wasn’t with them this time. Harry would be less hurt if a snake he had just created had died. He settled against the wall, and waited. He would have looked at the wards, but he couldn’t separate the darting forms of might-be-snakes from shadows with any accuracy, so he listened to Weasley and Harry instead.  
  
Weasley was breathing as though someone had left an iron weight pressing on his chest. Draco rolled his eyes. _Honestly. Apologize and get on with it._ For people who valued them, Gryffindors made apologies incredibly hard to struggle through.  
  
Weasley waited until Harry was leaning in on his palms and knees, peering after his snakes, which wasn’t the way that Draco would have done it. He would have wanted Harry’s full attention on him if he was going to apologize. Then he cleared his throat and mumbled the words. Draco frowned and cast a careful charm. People like Weasley really had no concern for eavesdroppers.  
  
“What?” Harry turned his head, but kept one eye on the wards. Draco approved. One eye was still more than someone like Weasley deserved, but at least Harry had restricted the amount of focus he was going to waste on him.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Weasley said.  
  
Because it was Harry, his face softened and he held his hand out as though Weasley had given him the treat of his life, instead of a grudging admission come too late. Weasley took his hand and nodded, and then released it and turned away as soon as possible.  
  
Draco nodded, too. Perhaps that was a sensible way to do it, after all. Take up as little time as possible, and don’t let the person you’d wronged ask any questions.  
  
 _And it makes a convenient way to hide any disgust that he still feels about the way that Harry looks._  
  
Draco half-smiled. Weasley needn’t worry. Draco could amply fill the role of Harry’s best friend any time he wanted.  
  
*  
  
Harry wished he had the time to have a full conversation with Ron, explain and listen and talk, and especially explain why he agreed that Parseltongue was Dark magic but Ron’s reactions and attacks had still hurt him.  
  
There were things that were more important right now, though. Like Hermione.  
  
And no matter what happened after they rescued her, Harry doubted that he would ever go back to having the same relationship with his friends that he’d had before he discovered he was a Parselmouth.  
  
 _Or rather, a Parselmouth who’s going mad,_ Harry thought, as he held his fingers out and snapped them in response to the instructions that the white serpent gave him. _It never mattered before that._  
  
The snakes he’d sent through the wards were doing well so far. They’d negotiated several different turns and corners, based on what the white snake told him, and they’d reached the halfway point. The wards changed here, linking up to the ones that were on Hermione herself, and they had to be more careful now.  
  
Harry leaned forwards so far that he felt a hand come down on his back to hold him in place. He smiled at Ron over his shoulder, and continued coaxing the snakes forwards, hissing the instructions the white serpent gave him. _To the left. Three of you in front—no, a different three. You need to—_  
  
Then there was a soft, sighing noise from the ceiling, and it unfolded down towards them. Grey-cloaked figures, in stiff cloth that looked like armor, came out of the shadows behind the wards at the same time, and aimed their wands at Harry’s snakes.  
  
 _Well,_ Harry thought, in the moment before the spells flew and the situation exploded, _at least we know where the Unspeakables are hiding now._


	25. New As Shed Scales

  
Draco summoned the hound back to him by the simple expedient of tossing the mirror back into his sleeve. They couldn’t use his pet’s wall-climbing abilities right now, and there were no more wards to be broken.  
  
But there were other things he could do, things that particular research on the web of information he’d shown Harry had taught him.   
  
He whipped his hand sideways, and murmured the incantation he’d invented for identifying wizards on that web under his breath. A pale grey glow surrounded three of the Unspeakables in front of them. Draco fell one step back as someone most impolitely tried to hex him, and cast the second spell, the one that would make the specific information pour in, and tell him who they were, and what kind of Dark Arts spells they had cast before, and which kinds they tended to favor.  
  
He raised his eyebrows as two of the pieces of information sparked to life. Wasn’t _that_ interesting, looking at it in that light?  
  
He smiled and reached for the distraction that lurked in his back pocket, all the time keeping an eye on Weasley to make sure he wouldn’t turn traitor at the sight of his fellow “Light” wizards. Harry might not think that was likely to happen, but Harry’s judgment was compromised at times.  
  
*  
  
Harry ducked and put his head between his arms, trusting the white serpent to watch out for him and give him reports on what was going on. He had immediately seen that two of the Unspeakables had brilliant wands in their hands, and one sight of them made his eyes tear up. He wouldn’t have put it past them to be using artifacts that were specially invented to shine light like that into the eyes of Parselmouths and blind them.  
  
The white serpent, his own eyes magical and unaffected, danced back and forth and hissed, _They are getting in each other’s ways. They did not plan well, this tunnel is too narrow—down!_  
  
Harry followed the direction without question. He slammed into the floor hard enough that the stone bruised his chest, in fact, and knocked most of the air out of him. He lay there wheezing and trying to get it back, while the white serpent crawled back and forth and kept up the steady stream of information that he had decided Harry needed to know.  
  
 _There are three Unspeakables standing back and directing them. The ceiling was a distraction, nothing important came down, and it all folded off to the side. Your friend makes a good accounting of himself—_  
  
He fell silent in what sounded like astonishment, and Harry hitched one shoulder up as a kind of nudge into the snake’s belly. _Can you tell me what’s going_ on? _I can’t see a thing right now, and I don’t want to look up!_  
  
 _The cold one’s friend has done something,_ the white snake said. _Something with keys. I don’t know the theory._ He sounded regretful about that. Harry hoped that if they survived this fight, he would get a chance to sit down with the snake and figure out how much magical theory he knew, and why exactly he knew so much of it and Harry not any. _It seems to have opened some kind of pathway to some of the Unspeakables. They’re standing there and trying not to scream._  
  
Harry smiled, and opened his eyes, peering out between his spread fingers for a moment. It seemed that at least one of the Unspeakables Parkinson had assaulted held a light-shedding artifact, and it had gone dim in his hands. Harry would be able to move in a moment, and make a difference that way.   
  
The expressions on their faces were indeed ones of fear. When Harry turned around to try and see what Parkinson was doing, however, someone else shone a light in his eyes and blinded him.  
  
Harry hissed. The white snake looped a coil around his throat. _It is indeed annoying, brother, not to be able to do anything in a fight like this._  
  
The sarcasm of his voice told Harry what he thought. He rolled his eyes and stretched his hand forth, concentrating. Imagination and memory and magic intertwined, and formed into a great grey snake that would not need its eyes to see.  
  
 _Yes._ The white serpent’s hiss was deep and languorous. _Remember that you are a snake-speaker. And you should see what the cold one is doing._  
  
Harry took a chance, and scrambled up, feeling his way out through the vibrations that the grey snake on the tunnel floor felt, at the same moment as he sent the snake forwards with a lash of his thought to scatter the Unspeakables.  
  
*  
  
Draco held up the square of metal in front of him. He had attracted the attention of a few Unspeakables, but not many as yet. They wouldn’t fixate on something so unlikely and harmless until many of them started thinking of it as “artifact.”  
  
He closed his eyes and blew on it, then cast some more spells on the metal, so fast that they flowed straight into one another without any gaps between one incantation and the next. Someone trying to learn the spells from watching him would have no luck, and Draco counted on that to protect many of his secrets.  
  
He threw the metal out in front of him when he was done, and it spun, flashing like a pinwheel of gold caught in the sun despite the lack of immediate light in the air. That caused many Unspeakables to fix on it, and some of them to leave off aiming at Harry’s great grey snake who was aiming for them. Draco smiled. Harry would be happy if all the snakes he created survived this fight, whether or not he had just created them.  
  
The square of metal stopped spinning long before it reached the Shield Charms that the Unspeakables were trying to set up, and hung there. Some of them stared. Some of them leaned out from behind their shields and tried to focus their wands on it.  
  
Strands of light, gleaming like tinsel this time, leaped out from the square and looped themselves around the necks of the Unspeakables Draco had identified as users of Dark magic. They screamed and struggled.  
  
But the point of the light strands wasn’t to linger. The forks spread and sank into their bodies, and they opened their mouths a moment later. More light came from their tongues, their teeth, spreading out into perfect memories, complete with sound, of the times when they had used Dark magic.  
  
Knowing that one of them had specialized in Dark magic that was meant to Obliviate his victims’ basic knowledge of life and leave them helpless infants made Draco enjoy the moment when those memories appeared all the more.  
  
Of course, Unspeakables being the modified Light wizards they were, unable to comprehend that their fellows might be complicated people, and still good allies even if they _had_ lied about using Dark magic, they turned on them, listening to the memories and aiming their wands at those wizards _on their side._ Draco strolled over to Pansy and took her arm while everyone was distracted, leaning in to whisper in her ear.  
  
“Do you think you can find us a path past the wards that are holding Granger prisoner, in all this mayhem?”  
  
Pansy glared at him, eyebrows flying up almost to her hairline. “Do you think I wouldn’t have done it before if it was that simple?”  
  
“I think that you weren’t thinking in terms of doors and keys before,” Draco said patiently. “You were thinking in terms of Dark paths and watching Harry in case he turned on you. Think now.”  
  
Pansy paused, and then snorted and took out a bunch of keys that banged and jangled on her wrists like a dozen Gringotts sacks. “Of course. I should have thought of that before. You’re a genius, Draco.”  
  
“I do but try,” Draco said, and inclined his head to her in a way that she was free to take as a bow if she wanted to, and moved back.  
  
The confusion in the corridor had become frozen confusion, with some Unspeakables aiming wands at each other, and the ones Draco had forced into memory reliving their traumas, and the sounds and colors of those memories playing out, and Harry backed against the wall with the white snake on his shoulder and the grey one in front of him, and Weasley standing off to the side as if he didn’t know what to do but feared anything he did would make the situation worse.  
  
Into the middle of that stepped Pansy, whirling the bunch of keys she held until most of the eyes not occupied with immediate pressures had turned to her.  
  
She smiled to them, and bowed, and employed the tactic that Draco had thought of because he had seen her use it once before, though only in practice. She had told him then that she thought it would never be ready to be used in battle, because it required too much concentration for her to build up when someone was casting at her.  
  
Now, she’d had the time since Draco suggested it to build that up. And she used it to grim advantage, as the keys leaped away from her hands and into the air, spinning and twirling still, and gathering more light to them than Draco’s enchanted metal square had ever used.  
  
Draco bit the inside of his cheek as all the Unspeakables tilted their heads back to watch this newest distraction. They might think of themselves as wise research wizards, but what they were was too inevitably fascinated by any new artifact that came along. They saw Pansy’s keys, and abandoned the battle around them to understand it, instead of focusing on the immediate and getting rid of the distraction later.  
  
The keys flew apart from each other suddenly, and between them spread a focused, glowing line. Pansy had told Draco once that keeping the keys close together was a risk, because they would influence and react with one another the way Potions ingredients would.  
  
And Draco had pointed out that _some_ reactions like that were explosive, and some were productive of new knowledge, and some were both at once.  
  
This was both.  
  
The keys arched up and then came down, spinning through locks that opened in the air in front of them, locks that appeared on robes, locks that appeared in the wards, locks that appeared on the wands of the Unspeakables. Each one that opened glimmered for only a moment, there and then gone again, and faded in a coruscation of sparks.  
  
But in that moment, all was undone, as though Pansy had found the means to reveal all those secrets at once.  
  
The wands unlocked and swung apart to reveal their cores. The wards that held Granger apart from them faded. Robes unraveled themselves and dropped to the floor in useless piles of thread. The air tore open, and shards of darkness and snowflakes and other things native to the Dark paths that ran hidden and unacknowledged all through the Department of Mysteries tumbled to the floor after the robes.  
  
Pansy laughed, and that was the center of all the swirling confusion for Draco, the delight and the competence. He ran up beside her, lightly touched her shoulder, and then vaulted over the Unspeakables attempting to pick up their robes and gestured back at Harry and Weasley.  
  
Harry, at least, had learned when to listen to him and trust. A snap of his wrist, and the grey snake was smaller and curled around his arm. Weasley was slower, gaping as he was at the naked women and trying to avert his eyes from the naked men, but he followed Harry when he began running.  
  
Pansy stayed behind. Draco knew she was setting the traps they had brought with them, the ones that would damage the Department, and smiled. He was hardly going to worry about someone who had already proven that she could survive far worse.  
  
Running, panting, through a corridor that still thrummed and hissed sometimes as though in desperation for its lost wards, they reached what looked like an ordinary door. Draco cast one of his detection spells on it, and more wards sprang to life, locked ones, hidden ones that had lain beneath the surface until now and thus wouldn’t respond to Pansy’s key magic, which only unlocked the visible and the active. He stood back and shook his head.  
  
“We can’t get in yet,” he explained to Harry. “I think we should wait for Pansy.”  
  
A hex doubled down the corridor and might have singed Draco’s hair, but Harry shoved him aside just in time and glanced warily back in the direction the Unspeakables had been standing.  
  
“That’s not an option,” Harry said briskly, and then he reached out with his wrist, the grey snake snapping into being like a stiff ribbon, suddenly much longer. Draco stood back and watched. This was a Parselmouth in charge of his magic, working with it, and he didn’t care about the disgusted look on Weasley’s face.  
  
Draco felt as though he had been waiting most of his life to see something at once so Dark and so precious, so rare.  
  
*  
  
The snake complained as he fully extended, but Harry had made him for one purpose that he didn’t need, now that the Unspeakables were disorganized and scrambling. And as he focused on the ward, the snake stopped speaking, and only flickered his tongue out instead.  
  
 _It is always better when the masses do what you want them to,_ said the white serpent smugly, and did a little dance on Harry’s shoulder that Harry thought he preferred not to know the reason for.  
  
The grey snake’s teeth rasped down the ward gleaming on the door, and there was a dull snapping sound. Then that ward crumpled apart, and the snake bit the next one, and that fell into dust, as well. Harry relaxed a little. He hadn’t been sure, for the briefest of seconds, that the Dark magic behind his snake was stronger than the kind that he could feel the Unspeakables had used to power their wards.  
  
The Unspeakables didn’t know Parseltongue magic, though, even if they _had_ come up with magical snakes to defend part of their domain. The wards crisped and fried, and then the door swung open and Ron ran forwards.  
  
“Back, Weasley.”  
  
Harry jerked, and even Ron, who didn’t have the reasons to listen to Draco and trust him that Harry did, stopped with one foot poised above the threshold of the room. He clicked his head around by slow degrees to frown at Draco, though. “You think that you can stop me _here,_ when my wife wants to see me?” he whispered.  
  
“Let’s ask her,” Draco said, and sidled up to the door, which was still not open far enough for Harry to see inside. “Granger?” he called out. “Do you want your husband to come charging in to your rescue yet, or not?”  
  
“Ron, stay back!” Hermione shouted at once. Her voice was ruined. Harry imagined some of the things the Unspeakables might have done, and began to conjure a very specific kind of snake. “They told me they were trapping the floor in here, and I saw them working on it. I don’t know how you got the door open, but these aren’t the same thing. Be _careful._ ”  
  
She sounded so ragged and heartbroken on the last words that Harry couldn’t help but lean in and smile at her. “Hermione?”  
  
She sat in chains on the floor, like Ron, but she jerked her head up at the sound of his voice. The chains on her were heavier, Harry thought, and they hadn’t bothered trapping the floor in the room where Ron had been, either. That seemed to suggest they considered Hermione more dangerous, despite Ron’s Auror training.  
  
“Harry?”  
  
Harry smiled at her more widely. “Yes, it’s me. And I think I can figure out a way to get you out of the chains, if you’ll accept my help.”  
  
Hermione bit her lip. “When have I ever refused help from you?”  
  
“When it involves my Parseltongue?” Harry raised the new snake that was coiled around his arm. It was looped with dazzling scales of gold and black, and he poured more strength into it, enough that Hermione was squinting as if she could see it. “I can rescue you, but I have to use that. Will you accept it?”  
  
Hermione spent a moment staring and squinting some more, and then nodded. “I don’t distrust you, Harry,” she said. “Not compared to some of the things the Unspeakables have done, and some of the things they’ve done that I know the Ministry is ignoring now.”  
  
Harry could practically feel the rapture flooding Draco’s body. He just kept from rolling his eyes, because Hermione would probably think it was at her, and she didn’t need that right now. Draco was in love with any knowledge, and the promise of what he didn’t know was enough, Harry thought, to make him want to interview Hermione right now.  
  
Luckily, he had the sense to restrain himself. Ron was talking to Hermione in a small, soft voice that was probably meant to calm her, but really served more to calm himself, Harry thought. It wouldn’t take much for Ron to snap and find some other way of dealing with the problem, now that the Unspeakables were done with.  
  
Harry risked one more glance back down the corridor before he turned his attention to the problem of Hermione’s floor. The hex aimed at Draco had been lucky, he reckoned, with so many Unspeakable wands opened to display their cores, and Parkinson must have dealt with the caster. It was silent and dark down there except for some random flashes of light and the sound of Parkinson muttering away to herself.  
  
“Okay, here it comes,” Harry told Hermione as he faced her again. “I’ll throw you the snake. It’ll crawl over your chains and bite through the locks. You need to tell me which ones it should go to first, if they were locked in a specific order—”  
  
“They were. The lowest left one first, then the one near my chin—”  
  
Harry held up his hand. He knew that Hermione liked to talk to soothe her nervousness, but he would never remember the list right now. “Rescue’s coming, okay?”  
  
Hermione nodded again, and then froze as if she thought that would somehow set off the trapped floor. Harry understood her caution. He was beginning to wonder exactly where the Unspeakables stopped, if this was their standard for the treatment of prisoners who were more valuable kept alive.  
  
He lifted his arm high, and then threw the snake.  
  
Ripples of light traveled up and down the golden body, briefly, making the snake look as if it were flying like the one that had died in hospital. Then it settled into place around Hermione’s shoulders, head extended to the locks and fangs gleaming as they sprang into place. Hermione sat very still, eyes shifting from side to side as if she could see the snake that way.  
  
“The one on the lowest left first?” Harry asked, keeping his voice as calm as he knew how, low as a drumbeat.  
  
“The one on the lowest left first,” Hermione echoed.  
  
Harry nodded again and gestured. The snake slid down Hermione’s side like a trickle of oil, until it reached the lock. It nudged it back and forth, and then hissed to Harry, _There are no wards here.  
  
That’s right, _ Harry hissed back, ignoring the way that Ron stiffened and Hermione’s soft gasp of shock. They had heard him speak Parseltongue, of course, but maybe not with the same deliberation. _I want you to bite through the lock._  
  
The snake hissed back, while its fangs gleamed, more like tempered steel than teeth. Harry could feel his hair stirring as the white serpent crawled up on top of his head for a better view. Harry smiled. He could hardly blame him.  
  
The snake bit once, precisely, and then swung his neck so that the lock in his mouth wouldn’t fall on the floor and perhaps trigger the trap. It ended up in Hermione’s lap, and then the snake edged towards the one under her chin.  
  
“That’s the next one?” Harry asked, and she nodded at him. By now, she looked more than half revolted, her fingers twitching and her shoulders hunching as though the weight of the snake had become unpleasant, but Harry kept talking, kept asking questions.  
  
And Hermione started responding to him, not the snake. She gathered the dropped locks in her lap and slipped a few of them into pockets in her robes. Harry smiled; he knew she would study them, and Draco would probably want to borrow them to analyze the magic that clung to them when she was done.  
  
The snake bit through the last lock, dropped it, and flew into the air as golden light, dissolving and entering Harry’s bloodstream once again. The white snake tapped Harry’s ear with his tongue. _Much better. I thought of suggesting that you keep him as a companion for me, but in the end, it would prove too much temptation for him to bite me out of jealousy.  
  
I should name you, _ Harry told him, raising a hand to touch the snake on the back of his neck, while Ron cast several Lightening Charms on Hermione and then used _Wingardium Leviosa_ to move her out of the room, floating her over the trapped floor. _You’ve gone without a name for too long.  
  
Consider well. _ The white snake turned his head to the side and arranged his neck in an elegant curve that echoed the way some of Draco’s door handles looked. _I am also too important to have an inferior name._  
  
Harry laughed, and then Hermione was out of the room and hugging Ron, and he came in for his share of hugging, too. She didn’t flinch from his scales or his fangs when they briefly touched her cheek before Harry hastily shrank them. She leaned against him and stared into his eyes, then nodded.  
  
“You did it,” she whispered. “And I don’t think you could have done it without your Parseltongue magic. Thank you.”  
  
“Of course he couldn’t have, Granger,” Draco said, coming over to put an arm around Harry’s shoulders, probably because he thought that kissing Hermione on the cheek was as close as Harry should get to her. “That’s what we’ve been trying to get through to you for a month now.”  
  
Hermione’s mouth tightened, at the stretched timeline as much as anything else, Harry thought, but Ron whispered before an argument could start, “Let’s get out of here.”  
  
And that, at least, even Draco seemed to agree on.


	26. Ouroboros

  
“This is so hard.”  
  
Harry smiled at his friends and waited on the opposite side of the room from them. Draco had handed them a bedroom in a separate wing from Harry’s straight off, and while Hermione had stared at him and Ron had fidgeted, Harry knew Draco meant the offer. The house was so big that Draco didn’t mind giving up a particular room if it meant that he wouldn’t have to see Hermione and Ron much while they stayed here.  
  
That didn’t mean he was very _generous._ But Draco wouldn’t mind it if they interpreted it that way, either.  
  
“I don’t know what to say to you,” Hermione went on whispering, looking down between her knees, where her hands were twisting, as if they were moving without her permission.  
  
“That’s a world record,” Harry mocked her gently. He let the breath whisper-hiss between his fangs, and Ron looked up with wide eyes. He flushed when he caught Harry watching him, and looked down again, running his fingers over his own hands. Feeling the smooth skin, Harry thought, reassuring himself that he didn’t have scales there, and the way Harry looked wasn’t catching.  
  
 _It’s not, and neither is the way that Draco looks at me. Thank goodness. I don’t think I’d like having to share him._  
  
Harry strangled the impulse to ask Ron and Hermione if they’d thought about it like that, and then stopped. They were still his friends, and they were trying to figure out how to talk to him. They hadn’t said thanks for the rescue and then bolted. They were still here, in the house of a man they had good reason to despise.   
  
Harry had changed his mind, had ventured near Draco in something that at least felt perilously like love, but he couldn’t expect them to have come with him. So he waited, and Ron was the one who plucked up his courage first, snake-disease or no snake-disease.  
  
“It’s just that we never thought this would happen,” Ron said, and his fingers rubbed up and down, up and down, on the back of his hand. “I mean, that we would find ourselves in debt to Malfoy. And to you.”  
  
Harry inclined his head. “All right. But now you know that you are. I understand your discomfort. It’s the same kind of discomfort I felt with Draco at first, when I didn’t know why he would have rescued me and I expected it to turn out to be a joke at any point. But you don’t have to live with him if you don’t want to, except for the way he’s in my life. The question is whether you can live with _me_.”  
  
Hermione stood up and reached towards him at once. Harry held out his hands in return, spreading his fingers so that she could see his palms. He hadn’t exaggerated the features that were naturally there now, but he hadn’t hidden them, either. She could make out the stubby nails, the way that the scales glowed on his palms, the slight scratches and stretches of black and gold that made their own ripples into the backs of his wrists.  
  
Hermione swallowed, and held on. Beside her, Ron reached out, and after a shudder that Harry understood and even honored in his own way, he laid his hand down over Harry’s and kept it there.  
  
“Yes, we can live with you,” Hermione said softly. “You’re _not_ mad, not yet. You’re doing better than any other Parselmouth I could find research on has done. You haven’t tortured anyone. You haven’t decided that you should rule the world, the way that Voldemort did. And the changes that you make to yourself should be ones that we can live with, as long as you’re happy.”  
  
“I am very happy,” Harry said, and smiled at them. “As long as you’re safe, and my friends.”  
  
Ron nodded. His eyes were hard, but Harry no longer thought that hardness directed towards him, or even Draco. It was the Ministry who ought to watch out, he thought. They had turned Harry against them with the way they treated him and his friends, and now it looked like they had achieved the same thing with Ron.  
  
“Do you have any idea what I felt when I saw it was Unspeakables holding us prisoner?” Ron whispered. “The bastards. All the times we’ve handed Dark artifacts over to them because the Ministry _promised_ us that those things were safe with them. They were the ones who asked us what we knew about Parseltongue, and treated us like—like _freaks_.”  
  
Hermione darted a quick glance at him. “And it would have been wrong for anyone to be treated like that,” she said. “Not just us.”  
  
Ron sucked in a quick breath and glanced at Harry out of the corner of his eye. “Of course that’s what I meant,” he half-babbled, sounding mortified. “Mate, I didn’t mean that what they did to you in St. Mungo’s was justified. Of course not. Sorry.”  
  
Harry nodded, but he found that he couldn’t smile as he met Ron’s eyes. “And do you still think that it’s your duty to escort me back to St. Mungo’s and hope they find some way to cure me? Or can you leave me free and trust that I’m living my life in the way I want to, the way that makes sense to me?”  
  
Ron cleared his throat several times. Harry waited, and wished that the floor didn’t seem so fragile, or perhaps that his friends didn’t know his expressions so well. No matter what Ron said—and he had to be honest, or this was the end—Harry wouldn’t be able to hide his reaction from them.  
  
“I think,” Ron said at last, and every word seemed to scrape at his throat, “that it’s your right to live the way you bloody well choose to.”  
  
Harry smiled at him, and saw the way Ron blinked before he beamed back at him. Had they really diverged that much? Harry thought, as he hugged his best friend hard enough to make his fangs pop out a little more. Become so different that it would _surprise_ one of them when the other approved of something they did?  
  
But that wasn’t exactly fair, either. Because in this case, he had thought the same way Ron did, at first. He had been convinced that the best thing he could do was die quickly, and stop bothering other people. It was really Draco who had taught him differently, and it was one of Draco’s lessons he was passing on to Ron.  
  
He could have told Ron that, but he decided to keep quiet for now. There was no point in causing needless conflict, either. He caught Hermione’s eye and thought she was biting her lip for the same reason, that she might have said something to him for the same reason.  
  
Then he stepped back, and looked both of them in the face. “What are you going to do now? If the Ministry suspects your involvement, it could be unsafe for you to go back to your jobs. And the Unspeakables would tell them soon enough.”  
  
“I’ll be carrying my case through the papers,” Hermione said, her face pale but her tone the kind of determined that you could build dreams on. “Because I saw other things in there that the Unspeakables didn’t mean to reveal to me, and they convinced me that we’ve been wrong to entrust as much Dark Arts knowledge to the Department of Mysteries as we did. If Dark Arts are dangerous, then they’re dangerous for _everyone_ , and they need to start screening the Ministry people who deal with it better, too.”  
  
Harry smiled at her, and then turned to Ron and waited.  
  
Ron gave him a half-shrug, and smiled. “I don’t think I can go back to just being an Auror,” he said lightly. “Do you think Malfoy might let us stay here for a while, until we decide how much danger we’re in and what we want to do next?”  
  
Harry smiled at both of them. “Draco would be delighted. Not because of you,” he had to hasten to add, “but because it’s something else that he can do for me.”  
  
Hermione shook her head, her eyes bright in a way that Harry couldn’t read. “I’ll probably never understand the two of you.”  
  
“I made the choice that enabled me to live,” Harry pointed out gently. “In the end, that’s really the secret, the only one there is.”  
  
Hermione kissed him on the cheek and talked about other things. Harry listened in silent contentment. He had no doubt that Draco’s answer would be what he had said it was. Draco had given up these rooms to them easily enough, after all. And he probably wanted a chance to pick Hermione’s brain about what she had seen among the Unspeakables.  
  
They might never understand what he and Draco had, but Harry had his friends back. And they had chosen him instead of the Ministry when pushed into a corner. They’d chosen friendship with him over the mindless rule of law or the blind service of principles.  
  
As always.  
  
*  
  
“I hardly dare open it.”  
  
Draco glanced up. He had been aware that an owl had swooped in through the window that morning with a letter for Harry, but he hadn’t paid much attention, engrossed in his own letter to Skeeter hinting at what had happened among the Unspeakables and his letter to Blaise lying out the bare legal details of Harry’s case. Harry was staring at the letter with such an expression of dread, though, that Draco stood and moved around the table, behind Harry’s chair, so he could see the seal.  
  
He laughed when he made out the Gringotts symbol. “Why fear?” he asked, and squeezed Harry’s shoulder. “They’ve taken all your vaults. And if they tried to freeze mine, they would find various blackmail secrets popping into the light of day.”  
  
Harry blinked at him. “You can blackmail goblins?”  
  
Draco smiled. “Oh, yes. And you would be surprised what the little buggers get up to when there are no humans around to make sure that they behave themselves.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth as if tempted to ask, then shut his mouth again and ripped open the thick, cream-colored envelope instead. Draco stroked his shoulder in private praise, leaning over him to read the letter.  
  
It was simple enough, and there was really no reason for Harry to sit there with it in his hands for as long as he did, reading the simple paragraph over and over again.  
  
“But I don’t get it,” he whispered at last.  
  
“What is there to understand?” Draco was feeling a bit bored, he had to admit, and had begun to yawn already. He leaned over Harry’s shoulder and flicked the paper with a finger. “They’re restoring access to your vaults, and apologizing for having taken them over in the first place. Just the way they should.”  
  
“But _why_?” Harry twisted to look up at him. “We didn’t do anything that would make the goblins think better of us!”  
  
Draco smiled, slowly. “Do you think that the goblins never unearth or want to keep Dark artifacts? Do you think the Unspeakables never took anything from them? Perhaps even lives? They want to study everything, after all. Or they wanted to,” Draco added. Pansy said that the magic they had left behind had rendered the place unusable, and Draco trusted her.  
  
“So this is a thank you?” Harry’s fingers curled around the edges of the letter as though he thought it would vanish.  
  
“Yes,” Draco said. “A goblin hates being in debt more than anything else. A thank you.” He touched the edge of the letter and met Harry’s eyes. “And a promise that they’ve paid the debt in full now, and that they don’t owe you anything else.”  
  
“I never thought they owed me anything in the first place.” Harry stared at the seal again.  
  
“But they did.” Draco shrugged and stepped away, shaking his head. “That’s the _truth_ , Harry,” he added, when Harry seemed to struggle with it. “What, did you think they would ask your permission before doing something like this?”  
  
Harry smiled and spent a moment looking at the letter. “It wasn’t that,” he said. “I just told you, I didn’t think in terms of a debt owed, and it’s a little startling to find out that they do.” He smoothed the letter once, and laid it down, and turned around to look up at Draco with a shining coming from deep in his eyes.  
  
“That means that I can start paying you some kind of rent for living here, anyway,” he said. “Thank you.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth to point out that _someone_ in this room was thinking of debts owed and it wasn’t him or the goblins, but Harry moved before he could speak, and when Draco found his mouth full of a warm tongue and a warm taste, he thought he could wait to talk about things like debts.  
  
*  
  
Harry paused on the stairs. He had been about to walk into the dining room where he and Draco ate breakfast every morning, but he had heard painfully polite voices in there. Well, one painfully polite voice, anyway. Hermione’s.  
  
And from the sound of it, Harry didn’t think she was trying to bargain for a house-elf’s freedom. He leaned on the banister and listened.  
  
“It was obvious, really,” Hermione said. Harry heard a clink that was probably her toying with a teacup, and grinned. She only did that when she was nervous. He wondered if Draco would pick up on that. Probably, since he could read Gryffindors, and even half-snake Gryffindors, easily, it seemed. “Once I saw how the proportion of the corridors fit together, I knew they had to be storing the Department of Mysteries inside folded wizardspace.”  
  
“Noticing that kind of thing as someone was dragging me through corridors and breathing threats in my face isn’t something I could do,” Draco said thoughtfully. Harry heard the clink as he put his own cup down.   
  
“But it was _obvious_ ,” Hermione said, sounding the way she did when Ron refused to read the improving books that she picked out for him. “What else would you think when you saw the lintels bulging overhead like that?”  
  
“That I’d hit my head,” Draco said. “Or that my captives’ tender mercies had done for my sense of sight.”  
  
Harry stifled a snicker into his hand. That was Draco at his most open, reaching after knowledge and at the same time offering whatever sympathy was necessary to keep someone talking. He doubted if Hermione recognized the manner, but then, if she didn’t, that wasn’t really her fault.  
  
Silence, and then Hermione said, “You didn’t invite me here to trade magical theory.”  
  
“I don’t recall _inviting_ you at all,” Draco said, his voice peaking with genuine astonishment. “You needed somewhere to stay after your ordeal with the Ministry, and Harry asked. So I said yes.”  
  
More silence. Harry wished that he dared shift nearer to make out the expressions on their faces, but they would shut up in an instant if they heard him moving, or at least Hermione would, and that would cut off the conversation.  
  
The white serpent’s face materialized in front of his eyes, hanging upside-down from his head. _Remember that you are a Parselmouth._  
  
Harry flushed and nodded, and clasped his hands, closing his eyes. Images flashed behind his magic, and weight gathered on his wrist. When he opened his eyes and looked, a golden snake hung there with his head on the back of Harry’s hand, his body slender as a thread. He touched his tongue to the knuckles of Harry’s fingers and slithered over his arm, dropping to the floor. Harry swallowed and tracked the snake’s progress with his eyes as he made his way over the parquet floor to the dining room. He doubted that even Draco would see him, since he was a new snake, or that he would give Harry away if he did.  
  
 _You still haven’t given me a name,_ the white serpent said, his tongue lighter than a wisp of air on Harry’s ear. _Even though you promised that you would._  
  
Harry closed his eyes, and not only because that let him concentrate on the sight impressions he was receiving through the golden serpent. Hermione leaned forwards over the table, her hands loosely clasped in front of her, her eyes on Draco so incredulous that she looked almost offended. Draco looked back at her, and sipped his tea, and appeared mysterious.  
  
 _I know your name,_ Harry whispered.  
  
 _Then tell me,_ the white serpent whispered back, and the silence echoed in and around Harry, in the dining room where the golden snake lay and looked at Hermione waiting and Draco sipping his tea and still not saying anything, and in the world behind his eyelids.  
  
 _Memory,_ Harry said.   
  
_Ahhh._ The snake drew out the word until Harry wondered what it would sound like to someone who couldn’t speak Parseltongue and was therefore hearing the hiss and not the words the hisses represented. _Yes. I can live with that name. You would have done better to give it to me long since,_ he added, and his words trailed off into an annoyed pout at the end.  
  
Harry caressed his scales where they became thin and delicate towards the back of his neck, and said, _I had to wait until I knew you better. That was the only way that I could know your name._  
  
What Memory would have said, he didn’t know, because Hermione started to speak again. “You really would do anything for Harry, wouldn’t you?” she whispered. “You—I didn’t think you helped him for anything but the chance to study a Parselmouth, but you talk about him as though you care about him.”  
  
Draco met her eyes and gave a little twist of a smile that Harry had never seen, or at least not since they became partners in this affair to bring Dark Arts to public notice. “Yes, I care about him. He’s my lover, Granger, and we’re in love.”  
  
Hermione leaned back, mouth open. Then she shut it, and there was a look in her face that made Harry relax all over, feeling as though someone had poured a handful of warm water on his muscles.  
  
Hermione sought patterns until she found them, and then she had a way to fit actions and words that didn’t make sense into them and reorder the world to her liking. She had found the pattern now, the one that made sense of Draco’s actions for her and even excused, or explained, the fact that he had come to their rescue in the Department of Mysteries, Harry thought. She picked up her teacup and tilted it towards him. “You really do love him.”  
  
Draco bowed his head, his eyes merry. He didn’t know Hermione as well, Harry thought, and didn’t understand how big a revelation this was for her. Or else he merely found the habit of ordering knowledge this way silly.  
  
 _I don’t know why you should, when you like to come up with categories to organize your knowledge,_ Harry thought at him.  
  
 _I quite agree,_ Memory said, and curved his head around to lay his chin under Harry’s. _The cold one is intelligent, and sympathetic, and a good provider, but he does make distinctions that make no sense sometimes._  
  
Harry nodded, and then held out his hand to withdraw the golden snake from the dining room. Memory shifted next to him, though, in a way that Harry had never seen him do before when he had any other snake. Harry looked at him with raised eyebrows, and Memory spent a few lofty minutes pretending that he couldn’t understand the meaning of that gesture before he flicked his tongue out again.  
  
 _Keep this young one around,_ he said. _He might be just what I need to keep you in line._  
  
Wondering, Harry pulled the golden snake back to him and coiled him on his arm, and then went into the dining room. Hermione stopped talking to Draco at once and bolted up to hug him, but she didn’t blush the way she would have if Harry had caught them in the middle of the conversation about him.  
  
Harry looked at Draco, who pointedly glanced at the golden snake around his arm, and then winked at him. Harry smiled. He should have known that trying to fool Draco was pointless.  
  
But he had learned not to mind.  
  
*  
  
“What are we going to _do_ , though?”  
  
Draco glanced up. Harry was in Blaise’s office for the day, settling the outlines of the case against the Ministry that Blaise would pursue for him, and Pansy had just stepped into Draco’s library and interrupted his reading. Draco laid the book aside and watched Pansy standing there, a vision in black velvet and golden keys.  
  
“Continue promoting the Dark Arts,” Draco said mildly. “Were you under the impression that the mere destruction of the Department of Mysteries was enough for me?”  
  
Pansy shook her head and leaned forwards. Her hair drooped around her face, and Draco blinked, startled. He hadn’t realized how badly she had taken this. He would have reassured her more if he had. “But what comes next? The Ministry will prosecute us for destroying the Department of Mysteries, and—”  
  
She stopped, because Draco was laughing. Draco couldn’t help it, and winced a little when she looked at him, but, well, there remained his inability to help it. “The Ministry prosecutes us for rescuing people it kidnapped,” he said. “ _War heroes_ it kidnapped. And then for bringing down miles and miles of Department that wasn’t supposed to exist. I’ve talked to Granger, and those corridors we went down were definitely not on the publically available plans. We destroyed property that they can’t claim without revealing more secrets than we cost them.”  
  
“You’re _sure_ that they can’t come up with some way to punish us for this?” Pansy pushed another wing of hair out of the way and peered at him.  
  
Draco shrugged. “They’ll try. But that’s where politics comes in, and maneuvering, and thoughtful expressions of concern, and the lawsuit that Blaise is helping Harry put together—robbed of some of its teeth now that Gringotts has given him his vaults back, but not every fang. And wait until we get to the point where _we_ can announce what we did, as a heroic rescue mission. The Ministry doesn’t know what’s going to hit it. And the public will eat up a story of star-crossed lovers and a friendship between Gryffindors and Slytherins.”  
  
Pansy sat up a little. “As long as I don’t have to have much personal contact with them. The way that Granger tries to reform everybody she meets is _creepy_.”  
  
Draco smiled. “I’ve given them the White Wing. Miles from your guest room, dear.”  
  
Pansy started to respond, but the Floo whooshed, and Harry stepped out of it. Draco smiled at him. He had taught Harry the spell that would bring him automatically to the fireplace nearest where Draco was, which seemed a sensible precaution to both of them as long as the Ministry retained its stupidity.  
  
“Parkinson,” Harry said, and nodded to her, then crossed to Draco and bent down to kiss him. The kiss became interesting, and Draco heard Pansy quietly extracting herself from the room. He hoped that he had at least said enough to reassure her.  
  
But if he hadn’t, he would have a chance in the future. That was the wonderful thing about this: that they would have a future, that the Dark Arts would.  
  
That Harry would.  
  
Harry pulled away and flopped down on the couch at last, grinning. “Zabini thinks we have a case.”  
  
Draco nodded. “Then you do. I’ve never known Blaise to be wrong about that yet. What?” he added, because Harry was staring at Draco as if he _hadn’t_ provided the reassurance that Harry was looking for.  
  
Harry opened and shut his mouth a few times, then said, “I’m no good at passionate declarations.” He got off his couch and came towards Draco, dropping to a knee in front of him. Draco felt his breath come faster and his mouth dry out, and not just because Harry wore his fangs and his venom sacs at the moment, his eyes glittering green around dark abysses of pupils, and the scales bright on his throat and cheeks and crown.  
  
“Thank you,” Harry said, taking Draco’s hands between his own. “I love you.” And he bowed his head and scraped his fangs on Draco’s hands, drawing small streams of blood, pumping the new poison into his bloodstream.  
  
Draco closed his eyes. Sweetness, and chill, fading out already to almost antiseptic tingles.  
  
“You should know I love you,” he said, and turned his head, jostling Memory for position a moment, feeling Harry’s scales beneath his cheek, feeling Harry kiss him with a forked tongue, feeling the incomparable dignity and delight that was being in love with a Parselmouth.  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
